When did you visit schools to decide which to choose?

[Yorkiegirl]

Message withdrawn

[AnnieQ]

Our local schools all had special open days when parents could go round the school, see the teachers etc, late last Spring for this September's intake. Try ringing them again to ask if they do this. If they don't, you should still be able to have a look around the schools, the secretaries should give you an idea of when you will be able to do this.

[LunarSea]

ds will be another 2006 starter. We've been going to events at the various local schools, fetes, Xmas fairs etc for a while to get a look at them from that angle - and ds already seems to have chosen the one he calls "my school"! Which is fine as it's also the one I like best, but there's no guarantee that we'd get a place there as we're (just) out of the catchement are. Formal/organised visits aren't until this Autumn though.

[LIZS]

When we applied for ds I was allowed to look around the May before we needed to apply for Oct 31st deadline - but only because we were due out of the country for a year and couldn't make the regular open tours in July or September.

[firestorm]

here in east sussex we are only allowed to look round schools at the end of jan & beginning of feb in the year of entry (usually only on official open days) this gives you about 2 weeks & 1 visit to make up your mind if you havent done any previous research (which most parents havent) not nearly enough time to make such an important decision imo.