Secondary school viewings

[Ramoaner]

Is it worth going to these when kid is in year 5 or should I wait until next year?

Year five but June not September.

I did it by myself in Year 5 and then with daughter in Year 6.
That way I could weed out the "definitely not suitable for her" schools and have less for her to look around - so less overwhelming.

@LongLiveTheLego none of the schools where I live (London so loads of them) do open days in June.

We have a mixture of June and September for open days round here- we did 3 in June y5 and booked in for 3 over the next couple of weeks! My feeling was that September of y5 was too early as it was 12 months before the decision had to be made and ds in particular might struggle to remember the schools

Yes go in y5 at least to a couple. It will give you a feel and the y6 visits can be more productive.
Tbh we had a choice of 2, I visited both in y5 alone, then took DDs to the preferred one in y6.

Depends on your choices. We had one schools we were definitely going to get into, one school we had a vague outside chance of and then nothing within sensible distance.
So no point going in Year 5.

If you've genuinely got lots of choices then you might want to start in Year 5.

Yes worth going in y5. When we went back in y6 to what became my DCs' school, I could see the limprovment. It was the nearest school and it really gave me the confidence to choose it.

Depends on how many schools you have locally really.

We were in the process of looking at houses when DD1 was in Yr5 so used tat as part of our decision process (without DDs).

Yr 6 was confirming our choice.

If you just have a couple if schools to look at, wai until Yr6.

Year 5 in June here if you are applying for grammar schools and intend to do the 11+. Otherwise autumn in year6.

Yes definitely go in year 5. It gives you a feel for which schools might be best for you and which might not. The open evenings we went to were quite hectic and intense so it's a lot to take in.p

Year 6 go back to those on your short list.

We only have September and October open evenings in this area.

I might be being OTT but I always think of those that had to make school choices during Covid without being able to see the schools. Going at your earliest opportunity helps guard against something happening, even just normal illness, that might clash with the year 6 dates.

We normally go in year 6 as there is only one school locally. But with dc4 who has learning disabilities we looked round in year 5 and year 6 to give him the chance to look round at his own pace. We slipped the head teacher's speech because I'd heard it 3 times already and it would have gone over dc4's head anyway. So we had 6 hours altogether to look round the school which was about right for him.

Hi Lego friend :-) oh really I didn't realise that. Where I live they do June for year 5 and September for that same cohort but now in year 6.