Anyone else looking at secondary schools?

[Starford]

Have you seen any schools where you’ve been blown away or vice versa? I’m not referring to things like grades or reports or grounds - more by less quantifiable aspects, such as displays, the headteacher’s talk, things the staff or children said, school ethos etc.

People will have different priorities. If a child is very academic, you’d want a school strong on high achievement. If they’re sporty, a school with a good range of sport. An excellent arts faculty if they’re creative and some people want an excellent SEND department and comprehensive pastoral care.

School ethos is hard to quantify and is more of the impression you get as you go around.

I suppose I’d want to see enthusiastic children and staff, interesting classrooms, a wide range of options, a head teacher and SLT who have the support of the staff, a clean and well kept environment and evidence of art, poetry and work.

In the end though, it depends whether you meet the criteria for admission.

When we went for the open evening at DDs school there was a student volunteer assigned to each family to show us round, answer our questions etc. They stayed with us for an hour or so. Just the shear amount of teenagers that gave up their spare time was impressive! There would have been about 150 of them.

The girl that took us round was pleasant, polite, able to hold a good conversation, enthusiastic, interested in my (quite nervous) DD and kind to her. She was more than confident enough to do the role. The school had prepped them well and she could answer my questions about exam results and behaviour policies etc. She was forthright about her experience and her friends' experience of the school. She clearly enjoyed the school overall. And speaking to DDs friends mums afterwards, she wasn't unique, all the student helpers seemed equally impressive. I hadn't had much experience of teenagers at that point, but I thought if the school had a 100+ of them across years 9 and 10 then they were doing something right.

DD was a student volunteer thus year for the year 6s looking round

We are looking at the moment. The headteacher bothering to turn up helps me feel more positive about the school. We had one where they didn't and no mention of where they were, which made you feel like they were often absent. Might not be true but that's the sense.

Open days where they do activities in each room are a disaster. The activity needs to take under 30 seconds otherwise there are queues of families lining up and then you run out of time to see everything. I just want to look round and ask questions.

One school the maths teacher just waved at some books and said "look at them if you want to know anything". So that was crossed off the list.

I have preferred honesty over slick production in terms of results. I am aware when you skew what you report to make it seem better "99% of students said they liked arts GCSE (small print: 100% failed maths)"

I want to know about teaching ethos and option choices mostly. I also want to know about mobile phone and toilet policies.

I like noting what we weren't shown. In one school we were not shown any sports related things. It left me wondering about whether they even had any and how shit it was.

I too have been impressed by the volume of teenagers giving time up.

There was one tour where we had a couple of pupils taking us around and a different set who took us around the rest of the school after the head’s speech. Both sets mentioned how good the monitoring system was and how they could find their standing in terms of positive and negative behaviour points, but it was said almost verbatim and made me feel a bit uneasy. That was the most “rigid” school though and the headmaster said some strange things in his speech - if there’s a problem, remember children lie, lots of parents used AI to email him and he could tell - it was so odd. The school had a brand new isolation suite, whilst much of the rest of the school seemed in dire need of funds (funding not school’s fault, but showed where priorities were). There was no scope for movement in maths if you were put in an inappropriate set in Y7. If you were put in a group beyond your ability, you’d be put forward for the higher paper, but if you were put in a group below your ability you wouldn’t be put forward for the higher paper. It just seemed very “computer says no”.

Another school some teachers said how supportive the head was, could give examples, had a “can do” attitude.

One school said they only had bullying due to phones, but given they were moving over to brick only phones, this will stop. I accept phones can be used for bullying, but it’s not like bullying only existed after smartphones.

Another school had a display with various languages outside a classroom, but only offered one language.

I don’t really understand the move to mixed ability classes. One teacher said those that master the subject more easily help support the ones that don’t, so learn through teaching others. I’m not sold, but it’s the way schools are around here.

One school does GCSEs over three years.

I’d love the totally impractical idea of trying the schools out for a week each!