Why do Yr5 children get "taster" days at high school, when they have a whole year before they go there?

[saltire]

We ahve had a letter home saying Ds1 will be going on taster days at the catchment secondary school in July. It puzzles me why, when they have a whole year before they go to that school

it's a sales pitch at our school. get them hooked before the application process starts,

and there's more time at a secondary school in the summer term (exam years have left) so teachers can run the days with little need for cover. I've done loads of them, really fun.

My Yr5 DD is going on a taster day tomorrow at our local secondary and they have invited parents and children to look round on another day. The school is very undersubscribed and it strikes a bit of desperation. DS went on one there and said there is noway he wanted to go there, thankfully got into another school.
The state applications have to be in October so there wouldn't be much time anyway.

Beacuse the secondary schools are 'touting for trade'

We went to hook the kids with the keen organised parents!

If any kids does science I'll bet my house that they do flame tests with them!

kid does

or kids do

take your pick!!

I actually quite like this idea (not done in our LEA). It gives the kids a chance to have a say about secondary school and must be more informative than the Open Evening we get in September, which is mainly a load of whaffling. When you've heard one Head of Year spouting buzzwords, you've heard them all.

We do year 5 visits, a year five open day, parental/child tours, a year 6 induction day

It never seems to end!

Our school does it for year 5 but we only go up to year 5. So if your child has a whole year before going up don't they usually do it in yr 6

They can't do it in Year 6, because that doesn't leave enough time before applications have to be in by mid-October.

Our local secondary schools offer all schools in the town and surrounding villages a taster day. They will only take one class at a time, so primary schools like ours with two classes per year group have to send each class on a different day.

The secondary school my children go to sets aside virtually every Wednesday of the school year for primary school visits, and only just about manages to meet demand.

I think it works fairly well, the only trouble being if your school is allocated one of the earlier days in the year for one school and a much later day for the other school - that gap really skews the child's perception of the schools, they can barely remember the first one!

Open days for parents take place in June/July of Yr5 and open evenings for the whole family take place in the September of Yr6.

Oh right I get ya.
x

Because you get virtually no time after the start of Yr 6 to apply for your school. As we found out last September. Welcome back to school...oh and by the way you have 4 weeks to choose and apply for your secondary school' We had nothing, absolutely nothing from the LEA before that date.

Luckily we already had some idea of which one we wanted.

I think you're being quite cynical actually. It's really important that children know where they're going and don't consider it too big and scary. The earlier the better. Also about raising aspirations so at 6th form level we start doing taster sessions with yr 10 and sometimes earlier.

The taster days in year 5 are not so much for familiarisation. Once they pick us, we do the same sort of thing all over again for year 6.

And then we get them in a day early in September, before the older kids start back, and do the same sort of thing again.

The year 5 stuff really is touting for trade

I agree about the touting for trade.

Although actually most children and parents do treat it as familiarisation too - it doesn't matter which school they eventually go to, it's still a taster of what secondary school life is and how it differs from primary school.

Our school actually starts it's new timetable in the last week of term (i.e. July), so all the 280 new Year 7 children come in and have their first week of 'real' secondary school. They are in their proper tutor groups and follow the timetable they will have for the next year.

The other years all move up a year too, so officially my other children will be Yr11 and Yr9 in July this year, whereas their friends at the school next door will still be Yr10 and Yr8.

getting them in during the last week is a great idea! Very

OK, thanks for answering. If, as I am planning to do, I go back to Scotland in July next year, I won't need to apply for a secondary place will I?