Meeting the Head

[seeker]

if you had a child going into year 7, would you expect to be able to have a meeting with the Head of the secondary school if you wanted to?

Depends on why you want to meet them. If just for a coffee, biccy and chat about last nights TV then obviously no. But if there are some serious issues regarding your child then yes - your junior/primary will help you with this if it's issues already known and being worked on.

Well, obviously not a social call! We live in a grammar school area and ds has CATS and SATS that strongly indicate grammar school, but unfortunately not backed up by his 11+ performance. I wanted to talk to the Head of the High School about how they deal with this higher achievers. I know about their record with the other end of the spectrum and I am very impressed, but I don't know anyone with a higher achieving child at the school. I just wanted to know if this was a normal sort of thing to do.

If you cannot get the Head, the Deputy will deffo be able to help and the Head of year. I would phone or email them.

Our high schools (we are a grammar area) have a Head of transition, which is the one you would talk to.

I doubt the head will see you. You could ask to see someone but more than likely they will refer you to the open evening. They don't have time to have individual meetings with prospective parents.

My DCs school might offer you an appointment with the assistant head who used to be in charge of G and T (and probably one of the most useless members of staff they employ).

Have you been to their open evening? We've been to the evening at the school dd is likely to go to, and there was lots of opportunity to talk to the teachers (including HT and deputy if you wished) and ask specific questions.

I would expect an Open Evening with plenty of opportunity to speak to teachers and the head of the year, with the chance to make a separate appointment for issues which might require more time.

I would also expect any teacher I approached during the evening to know what they had in place for g&t children.

Done the open evening. Trouble is, that was when I thought he was going to pass the 11+!

Oh I see, time for the rethink. In that case, I would ask for a meeting with the HOY- likely to be more useful than the headteacher and less booked up.

We have a "meet the leadership" meeting once a term. Open to anyone regardless if you have a child there or not in fact even if you dont have children you can go! You are obviously not allowed to discuss you specific issues but you can find out in detail e.g. how they manage gifted and talented, how the day/week/term/curriculum is organised find out a bit more about individual subjects e.g. RS when I was at school it was all bible stories but now its changed. I felt it was really helpful.

An appointment with the head of year might be more useful (and easier to arrange)