Secondary transition days - logistics

[Melyingbunny]

I have grown up children and I’m sure the logistics of transition days were much better thought out when they went up to secondary. For my current year 6 child I’m having to take 2 days off work to take and pick her up as it runs 8.40-2.50pm, they have to be taken by a parent and signed in plus is 5 miles from our house . This is for our catchment area school. No consideration as to how you are meant to get younger siblings to school on time (in our village 5 miles away) and be there at the same time either

That is not common in our local schools. You could get in touch and ask if another parent can drop them - I'm sure you're not the only one in this position.

For local schools I think they expect the children to take themselves or for parents to organise lifts between themselves.

How will your child get there in September and why can't they do that for the transition days (which look like normal school hours)?

My DDs took the bus for transition days (normal public transport bus) transport isn’t laid on usually

They get the school bus here, just like they will need to in September.
And have standard hours, along with no signing in.

The arrangements your school have made don't sound parent friendly. Take it as a warning for their attitude going forward!

As it’s the catchment area school and more than 3 miles away then the county council run a bus service from our village as they are legally obliged to do for the children attending. However no one seems to have considered this for the transition days. Parents have to sign their children in and out too so it’s not even as if they can just drop them off a bit earlier or send them on the bus. Apparently the drop off is absolute chaos too according to other parents who have done it before, with very long queues of traffic too, usually really busy leaving the site with all the school buses but adding a few hundred cars from parents apparently makes it much worse!

Don’t expect SLT in a school to have common sense. Parental sign in? Dear me.

Yes it’s made me really worried this will be their ongoing approach and attitude 😕 the current year 6 cohort is quite a big one locally so maybe they think they don’t need to bother being parent friendly

Not so bad if they can just go as they normally would once they start there

Just seems ridiculous they’ve organised this in a way which requires parents to take 2 days off work and then are not even able to get their younger children to school

Just tell them a parent can’t be there. They can’t exclude them for that surely
it’s a secondary school. It’s not like it’s a year 5 taster day.

They want the parent/adult to be there to sign them in and pick them up at the allotted time, I suppose they just wouldn’t accept the child if just dropped them offf for them to walk to the gates themselves. Would skip them but worried she’d miss out on any induction element of it. Just going to take her in late

Wow. I’m come across some really dumb things at our local High School but that one really does take the biscuit.

How weird. I did take DS to his induction day as he wasn't yet comfortable with the walk, but they summoned him through the gate on his own (well along with others arriving at the same time) and very politely made it clear they didn't want parents coming in (they did do a parents induction evening later).

We had similar issues with DC2’s secondary school transition day last year.

Like you we are about 5 miles away from the nearest secondary school, and my DC use the school bus provided by the council, but this wasn’t available as an option for the Y6 transition day.
We didn't have to sign DC2 in, and the secondary school gave parents the option of giving the Y6 students permission to walk home by themselves, but that’s neither safe nor practical given where we live in relation to the school.

The primary school DC3 goes to does however have a drop in breakfast club, so I was able to drop DC3 off early at primary school before taking DC2 for the transition day. Would something like that be an option for you if you spoke to your younger DC’s primary school?

The most annoying bit was that DC1 goes to the same secondary school, and when DC1 did his Y6 transition day they’d arranged buses to and from the primary schools so all I had to do was get DC1 to his primary school at the usual time. So I wasn’t particularly impressed with the change!

At our school, the year 6 kids are allowed to get the regular school bus on transition days. Makes sense because the deadline to apply for school transport was I think sometime in May so they know who will be coming in by bus in September. Year 11s & 13s have left so there’s plenty of space on the buses.

Yes I definitely don’t remember this being an issue with my older children, I don’t even recall dropping them off for transition days so I think there must of been transport arrangements in place.
There is the option of a childminder but we shouldn’t have to pay one for her to be able to attend these. It really doesn’t make sense that they can’t provide transport when they theoretically have a similar number of empty seats on ther regular school buses from the year 11 students who have now finished or why is a coach not provided in a similar way to any other school trip. If the council have decided that they are too strapped to fund similar transport as they are legally obliged to do once they officially start at the school then they should just not have the transition days as it is not fair on the children of parents who are unable to facilitate them if the council is not. For parents who don’t drive there is no way they would be able to collect their primary school children either. We never had such things when I was moving up from primary school, any induction took place when we started.
One of my DDs friend’s parents has kindly offered to take her with her child

Exactly! Thats really good your area does that, is a good aspect of the transition to experience too