Sorry - what am I meant to be looking for in a secondary school?

The headmaster at my sons' school (in his open day speech to prospective parents) said his school educated boys who went on to become, amongst other things: doctors, lawyers, scientists, writers, artists, academics, politicians, dot com entrepreneurs, bankrupts and drug addicts. I liked that. I didn't want my lovely sons to be moulded into a type of boy. I wanted them to learn lots of really interesting exciting things from lots of really interested excited people and they really do.

Good luck with your search.

plenty do, amicicissima.
and plenty of selective schools do FA in the way of improving attainment, they just rely on the baseline data and do the bare minimum.

you can find the most recent league tables here if you really want to look. I'd echo the advice from others - visit on a normal day, what are the relationships like, staff-students, students-students etc, how do they behave in the corridors, what are the extracurricular activities, what do they do/where do they go at lunchtime and breaktime, is the emphasis purely exams or on rounded education and what are the toilets and library like.

non-selective state school, I should have said

which also means that any state school getting over 1000 is doing really well

We are currently doing the rounds and it is a mare.
I've been to four and each time I feel like a little kid again...please Miss, can I use the loo?
One did have a particularly impressive staircase...but it was over an hour away.

The head has to look interested and competent. Helps if she/he knows the pupils names. And actually wants to talk to you when you ask questions.

Don't personally like huge schools. Probably because it seems so alien to my experience.

Are the children polite and helpful? Do you know any children who go there?

Ofsted report.

I know ahundredtimes - my attempt at sarcasm

I am interested to know whether you have managed to achieve accademically since leaving school

The ironic thing is that I did achieve at school but have little confidence about my ability to work in a suitably qualified job now - which shows i guess that a good education doesnt necessarily get you anywhere much

wonderstuff is right - selective and private schools will have very little value-added comapred to a good state high school but that doesn't necessarily mean they're no good; just that they have tests that weed out pupils unlikely to perform well academically at the end of their eductaion there.(unless they are an inclusive private school or somesuch).

I don't think that value added has socio-economic indicators other than if a school is in a more deprived area its children will get lower KS2 results, essentially KS2 sats are used to predict GCSE results and like moomin says a score of 1000 indicates the children did as expected. It does seem that the higher the KS2 feeder results are the more difficult it is to get a very high value added score, obviously if children are meeting there potential at primary or not will impact on the value added the secondary gets.

If you want I can interpret any info on given schools if you like (obv just looking at their figures) but I could also review their websites for you!

the most useful value-added is not based on sats, it's based on end of school qualifications as this is when they leave school (no employer is ever going to ask what your child got in their SATs, esp given the chaos its descended into over the past few years!).

If you go onto the dcsf website onto this page and serahc for the school, look at the section that is headed: "Key Stage 2 to 4 Contextual Value Added Measure" and/or "Key Stage 3 to 4 Contextual Value Added Measure" and if this figure is over 1000, the school 'adds value' as in it help the pupils achieve better results than would have been predicted when they entered the school in Year 7. If it's around 1000, the pupils do just as you would have expected, and obvsiouly under 1000 and they haven't done as well as their potential indicated.

Also look at the information in the top section for the school for how many pupils are on free school meals toegther with number of SEN pupils, as this will give you an indication of how inclusive the school is and also what the socio-economic factors might be on pupil-attainment.

I would probably see if the school could nurture your child's interests and aptitudes - eg theatre and drama for a dramatic kid, languages specialism, fab sports facilites or whatever, then look at how well behaved the kids are, see if you click with the head at all (ie think they are a good person with he right ideas) and then I'd want to know how many kids get into Oxford or Cambridge, not because my kids will necessarily be able to get there, but I think it says a lot about the expectations of and aspirations for hte pupils if they do offer it as a realistic chance and ideally offer coaching etc.

Personally I loved the concept of rating a school according to how fab the staircase is

What a fabulous indicator of accademic achievement!

Value added means their sat scores, then add a few (or lots) of points according to how disadvatanged or not the children who attend the school are perceived to be

So a school in a rough/poor/deprived neighbourhood might get low scores but extra points because of the area

Kids in a nicer area are likely to get better results in SATs so will accordingly get far fewer if any value added points

HTH - I am not an expert though!

They only invite their most presentable/personable children to be tour guides on open day.

I think cod's advice is very good

Look at the loos - its where the action happens between lessons

Oh we are doing this now 100x and I am heartily sick of it all.

Today's school trip to visit another school was full of the usual claptrap statistics and stuff. It has made my head ache working out what is important and I think that value-added is the best measure - but you will probably have to work that out for yourself for an independent school.

Anyhow I have a new metric. I've decided that a school should stand or fall by the quality of its library. Today's 500 year old institution had a lamentable library which had this rule:

"Books are sorted by age groups and children in years 7-9 are not allowed to borrow books from the year 10+ section."

That helped me to cross it off my list.