Taking child out of school for an open morning?

[AhAgain]

Are schools (private) ok with you taking your child out of school to attend another school's open morning? It feels a bit like making excuses at work to attend a job interview with another company...!

We are most probably going to stick with the current school, but this other school is our "back up" (less academically pushy). DS is about to go into Year 2, so we are keeping an open mind re Years 3l4 and beyond. I do want to take DS along (to gauge his feelings etc), but the open morning is on a Thursfay morning in early October.(was hoping it was a Saturday!).

Thanks

[CafeCremeEtCroissant]

They have no choice but to be fine about it do they😬

We have two booked so far (going up to Year 7) Sept '17

All the schools do them in term time, so it is what it is.

[PettsWoodParadise]

We had to do this for prep to secondary where most of the girls carried onto the schools own senior school. We were looking at grammar and independent and so had a large number of schools to take a look at. For some we left DD in school and others that were further down our list but still wanted to see we went alone and would have arranged to take her if our visit pushed that choice further up the list. We split the visits between Y4 and Y5. It really helped DD focus on her entrance exams as there was one grammar and one indie she really liked and she was really happy to do the study to get a place at those schools. I don't know that she would have been ready for lots of visits at a younger age. I think we would have done the visits and then arranged for her to see our shortlist of two. We found October half term was a good time for visits as DD's school had two weeks that didn't necessarily mesh with the half terms of the schools we wanted her to see and so could go along. We were very upfront with the school as we didn't want DD to feel the need to hide it. The result was a surprising array of tactics on behalf of the school to give DD lots of extra opportunities to try to encourage her to stay so gently positive rather than negative.

[AhAgain]

Thanks - it makes sense: I need to tell the school and get on with it. I imagine that we are not the only ones.

DS is currently at a pre-Prep and about 90% of the children go on to the Prep at the same school. We are only considering/looking at one other school: also fantastic, but progressing with is friends at his current school and the academic focus that the current school has are preferable at the moment. However DS currently only has a "conditional" offer for the Prep for his current school: by Easter of Yr 1 they were unsure if his maths would be strong enough (his reading and writing are more than strong enough). So they will allow him to progress to the Prep, but he will be specifically marked for regular review especially in relation to advancement to Yr 3 and 4.

I think that DS's maths is now "clicking" (it was beginning to in Summer term and I have done a lot of reinforcement maths work with him over the Summer (and he is thriving). I think that he will be fine at the Prep and that, actually, the focus and discipline will be good for him (he loves routine and rules). However, I am not taking anything for granted and want a back-up.

DS's current school do their open days on a Saturday. Wish the one school we want to take him around did too!

[Leeds2]

In the circumstances you describe, I doubt his current school will be at all surprised if you take him to open days at other schools.