Student support handover at the end of the year
Published 7 min read
How to hand over student support between year levels: what to include, a Term 4 process that works, and how Descant's handover PDF helps.
- Wellbeing Coordinators
- Learning Support
- Year Level Coordinators
On this page
Summary
A good end-of-year handover tells next year's team what support a student has, what is working, what is still outstanding and who to ask. Build it from the record, not from memory: close or carry forward each open case on purpose, write down what was agreed but not yet done, and hand over a short summary the receiving teacher can read in five minutes. Descant helps with a year transition preview, a decision for every open case, and a handover PDF from the student's record.
Why handovers go wrong
Term 4 is the busiest part of the year for student support. Reports are due, transition programs are running, staffing for next year is being settled, and the people who know a student best may not be at the school in February. When a handover goes wrong, it is rarely because nobody cared. It is usually because:
- the information sat in a coordinator's head, an inbox or a spreadsheet only one person could find
- open support was never formally closed or carried forward, so nobody knew if it was still running
- actions agreed at the last support meeting were never written down with an owner
- the new teacher received a long file and no summary, or a summary and no file
The result is familiar: a student starts the year without adjustments that were working, a family has to tell their story again, and the support team spends the first weeks of Term 1 rebuilding what it already knew.
What a useful handover contains
A handover is not the whole file. It is a summary that points to the file. Keep it short enough to read before the first lesson.
What to document in a student support handover:
- The student's current year level, home group and any personalised learning or support plan
- Whether the student is counted in the NCCD, and the category and level of adjustment recorded
- Each area of support that is still active, with the strategies in place and how the student is responding
- Actions agreed at support meetings that are not finished yet, with who owns them
- Whether consent for sharing information is in place
- A recent picture of wellbeing, such as a summary of check-ins, rather than a single snapshot
- Recent assessment results, where they help the next teacher
- Who to contact for more detail
Write it in plain language. The person reading it may be a graduate teacher, a casual relief teacher or a new learning support officer. If a strategy only makes sense to the person who designed it, add one line explaining it.
A practical end-of-year process
1. Review every open case before you change year levels
Before the school rolls students up a year, list every student with open support. For each one, decide on purpose:
- Carry forward: support continues next year with the same plan, reviewed early in Term 1.
- Close with a handover outcome: the support has finished for now, and the record says why.
The point is that no case drifts into the new year by default. A case still "open" from two years ago tells the next team nothing.
2. Agree who owns each outstanding action
Go through the actions from the last support group meeting or case conference. Anything not done needs a named owner for next year, or a decision that it is no longer needed. If the owner is leaving the school, reassign it before they go.
3. Check consent and plans are current
If the family consented to information sharing for this year, check whether that consent covers next year. Check personalised plans have a review date in Term 1. The IEP guide by state covers the different names and review cycles across Australia.
4. Prepare the summary, then the conversation
A written summary does not replace a short conversation between the current and the receiving teacher, but it makes that conversation better. Send the summary first, so the conversation can focus on what the page cannot say.
5. Store the handover where the next team will look
A handover in an email thread is lost by March. Keep it with the student's record, so it is there when someone looks the student up, and so you can see later who produced it.
When a student moves to another school
When a student leaves for another school, what you share and how is set by your sector's rules, the family's consent and the legal requirements in your state. Check with your leadership team before sending student information outside the school. The privacy compliance pages summarise the frameworks by state and sector.
How Descant handles year transition and handover
Descant keeps each student's support in one record, so the handover can come from that record instead of being rebuilt by hand.
Year transition preview
A year transition page shows how students are spread across year levels, how many have active referrals, and which staff are covering each year level. Before anything changes, staff choose how each year level maps to the next, including which students leave as graduates. Then, for every open case, they choose Carry forward or Close with handover outcome.
Carrying a case forward keeps it open and updates its year level. Closing it records "End-of-year handover" as the reason, so a year from now it is clear the support ended at transition, not that someone forgot about it. Nothing is deleted: the student's history stays in their record.
To run it, staff type a confirmation word, and the run is recorded in the school's audit log. If your year levels come from your student information system, Descant leaves those year levels as they are and only refreshes the year level shown on each case.
Handover PDF
From a student's record, staff who can see the caseload can download a Handover PDF. It brings together:
- the student's details, year, home group, NCCD category and level, and individual plan
- each active support episode: status, urgency, areas of support, support tier, consent, current team, active strategies, outstanding meeting actions and the latest response rating
- a summary of the last 30 wellbeing check-ins, as an average mood and a count of safety or "wants to talk" signals
- up to 10 recent assessment results
Every page is marked confidential, and each download is recorded in the audit log. The PDF names the student, so treat it like any other confidential student record. It is a snapshot for a handover conversation, not a replacement for the full record.
Built for the people who pick it up
The receiving teacher gets a few pages they can read before Day 1. The support team keeps the full history, the decisions made at transition and a record of who downloaded what. For writing up transition support during the year, the transition support note template gives staff a structure to follow.
Common questions
Does closing a case at transition delete it? No. In Descant the case is closed with a reason and stays in the student's history.
Can we produce a handover without rolling year levels? Yes. The handover PDF is available from the student's record at any time of year, for example when a student changes home group or a new case manager starts.
Who should get the handover? Usually the receiving classroom teacher or year level coordinator, and the person taking over case management. Share it only with staff who need it to support the student.
See how Descant works from first referral to NCCD evidence, or start a demo to try a year transition on a made-up school.