Reception New Starter Visits - Going Round In Circles.

The reality is its only an illusion of choice - unless schools are surprisingly undersubscribed near where you live, you are likely to get your catchment school or nearest school.if your nearest school is very popular and you don't live close to it, you'll get a less popular school. Look at the allocation statistics for the last few years, see where you would realistically usually get in and plan accordingly.

Try following the schools on Facebook, sometimes they post open days on there. I found most of the schools local to me didn’t have open days until late November/ early December and one wasn’t until January. Your nursery might know, they often get details of open days to hand out to parents.

I'd check the school callendar. It's normally published online for parents evenings and school plays and such and open days are normally listed just so the staff can prepare fancy wall displays

I think the whole 1 week/ 2 week October break depends on agriculture. It was 1 week when I lived in a city but 2 weeks where I am now. Local kids would have spent the time tattie picking back in the day.

I personally would email the schools as it’s harder to ignore with a paper trail.

Round here you only get into the school you are in the catchment for. Most school therefore don't have Open Days but you can book and they'll give you a tour often with some other parents but honestly school are so busy right now with the start of term. Our half term is last week of October and first week of November

I didn't go to an open day and I didn't send her to the local one, I just read the ofsted report and looked at the website and decided that way

We had trouble 2 years ago sorting out primary school visits (admittedly was tail end of pandemic). Agree with pp, ring after half term (don't bother emailing, they probably won't reply). If they haven't got any dates organized by then, ask for a meeting and tour with the Head. I think mostly we did visits in November so there's still lots of time.

We did find a couple of the more over subscribed schools just didn't seem to bother offering a look round though!

YANBU to be looking. We contacted my son's school last September and had a tour with the head. The other 3 had open days at the end of September. All this info was on the websites! We'd picked the school by 1st week in October.

Schools around here hold their "open days" October/November but it's essentially an hour after school rather than a day. They send flyers to local pre schools and nurseries usually.

All of the schools around us had open days, they started in early October and each gave a choice of a few different dates and times up until mid December. I saw the first one advertised in our local community newsletter/newspaper then checked the school websites and they were all mentioned on their homepages. We had to sign up to a tour in advance by emailing the school. Can you scroll back through their social media to this time last year and see if they were advertised then?

I come from that kind of area so entirely sympathise. The pay off is having to live in the arse end of nowhere so very much swings and roundabouts!

Just had a look at our local school website ... 3 dates advertised this side of half term.

Be very careful with this, if it’s anything like our area if you don’t take the catchment school and your chosen school turns out to be oversubscribed when any younger siblings are ready to start school, they will send your children to different schools without a 2nd thought.

We fell foul of this and ended up with our two placed in schools 14 miles apart and the appeal panel takes absolutely no interest in any mitigating circumstances or reasons for your school choice I’m afraid.

It's still quite early days. Usually these visits are in November. It's only just the start of term. They are still catching up on admin and settling in new students. Applications are due in January, so you have plenty of time. My eldest is applying for secondary school (due 31st of Oct) and open days only announced 2 weeks ago - one is today and one is next week. Just give it time and check back towards end of October. We had dates circulated to us by our nursery. Or just look on the school website.

that sounds like bliss, ours are so subscribed, a couple of new builds are enough to move the boundary of the catchment. When you want a really good school, you need to pay a fortune for a property and be REALLY close.

I'm a bit jealous of you having 3 schools within a 10 minute walk. We live 45 minutes walk from our nearest primary school.

My eldest started primary in 2010 so my experience is probably out of date but I just rang our nearest school up and they booked me in with the head teacher for a short tour. I had a quick look at the reception class, the hall and the library, asked a couple of questions and talked briefly to the senco. To be honest unless it was awful then ds would be going there as the next nearest schools were miles away, over subscribed about of catchment so very unlikely ds would get in. The secondary school near us has an open evening and I always go when I have a child in year 6 because it's nice to see the school and there is always free food. However there isn't a choice and the next nearest school is miles away. College is better, you get a choice of 5 but the closest is 6 miles away so the school run is complicated and takes ages.

Schools in my area don’t do visits, so I booked to look round (the only school in our catchment!) on my own. The head was very happy to give me a little tour. The school I work in doesn’t either, but again would be happy to do a private visit.

Check over subscription info too. It could be, that realistically, children are given what’s available and if open days were promoted, parents would simply end up touring and applying for schools that they have absolutely no chance of getting a place in.

This very much depends where you live though. My whole area is undersubscribed so you could go to any school within about a 30 mile radius and they'd be delighted to have you.

DDs primary school do an open morning in October Half Term but will do tours at anytime if you contact them.

We went to the open morning but then wanted to see the school with actual children in it so booked a private tour. We loved it and thats where she went.

Our local ones tend to be late Oct / early November.

We are only a few weeks into the school new year so give them time.

My local schools don't have open days, for many reasons, but one being that it was not ideal for the children in reception, who have only been settling in for a month or 2.

You should check the dates of the Christmas Fairs, open days or not, they will give you an interesting feel of the school, parents and children.