What to ask a school on pre-application visit? (reception Sept 2013 entry)

[Lexilicious]

So far I've got (from reading threads on here!) a few ideas what I need to know from the school(s) that we'll be applying to this winter. We are going for a look round our closest local JMI in a couple of weeks and I would like to have a few sensible questions (or things to look out for in their leaflet, if there is one)

What was your actual catchment for the intake of 45 last year and do you have any indication of e.g. a glut of siblings etc for this year?
Do you do complicated settling in sessions for a few weeks for the youngest in Reception entry?
What is your lunchbox policy? Drinks in water bottles policy?
Asking to go to the toilet policy? Assistance with the bottoms of inexpert wipers?
What generic uniform is available (and what items are ruinously expensive from a single source)?
What do they do at playtime? How supervised?
What is picking-up-at-gate policy re childminders, relatives, etc.
What sicknesses do you send them home for, at what notice, how long excluded?
What are actual homework requirements by year? (time expected, typical task)
What do you do about both the most and the least capable in the class for things like literacy and numeracy - extra help/support, extra challenges, etc?
How much notice do we get of inset days? Nativity costume requirements? Extra money requirements for an outing?
How do you mainly communicate with parents? (do I need to look in a book bag every day for notes?!)
Are PTA/contact meetings held only during the day? what about working parents

I am reading the prospectus which mentions a lot of these things but not quite in detail. Like "Particularly able children are catered for within the class setting." - what does that actually consist of? My PFB DS is a real bookworm, will he be able to race through any books he likes or will he be held on the same ORT band risking him getting bored/frustrated? (which is what happened to me when I was 5 too!)

There must be others... Any suggestions? And I really don't want to be at all negative, I want to have DS at a school where I can just happily support what they're doing and be constructive if I need to question something.

Wow that seems very detailed. Is this for a private school? In the end I would just ask things that would actually make you choose one school over another. The biggest ones for me were sense of community, general intake (ie how likely DS was to make a friend who was really naughty, to be honest) and level of ridiculousness over jumping through hoops for ofsted/SATS hothousing. These are things that are pretty difficult to ask questions about but are gained from discussions with parents of children at the school already (e.g. conversations at the park). If this isn't for a private school, it may be that you don't have this granular level of choice anyway - places for any school were hotly contested mostly over distance in my area, and so preferences for a particular school didn't really matter, parents were lucky if they got their first choice. I would look at distance from school for the last admissions, it will show you where you are likely to get in.

six years ago my list would have looked like yours!

now it would be:

"can I meet the head?"
"do i like the head?" (addressed to oneself of course!)
"does the head seem to like me?"
"does this head seem like the sort of person who will come through for me when I have to go and see him'her because something has happened that has made my child vulnerable in some way that I cannot predict now?"

With the last question really being the only one that matters.

I would ask your questions - but really I would be listening out for anything to help answer my questions.

Oh, and "is there an after-school club"? :)

well now I feel like a prize tit! This is a local authority school, good/outstanding ofsted, but our closest by distance and most convenient for both our commutes. It's so close I hope we're a dead cert for it (I see quite a few people passing my house on the way to it, but we have a little baby boom of DS's age at this end of the road which might skew the boundary a bit!)

You're both right, it's the wrong list to ask at a pre-application visit. It's more the list for the 'getting ready to actually start there' visit. So I like lingle's list which tells us whether to even put a school on the short list. Knowing of course that the craziness of applications could throw us completely out of catchment altogether.

There are after-school clubs on the prospectus! Hurrah!

While all these are good to know a lot is only relevant when your child actually joins the school.

We had on our list:
How much PE
What kind of lunchtime clubs
Do they do trips
Do they teach another language

A lot of your questions could also be answered by looking at the school's website. They normally have uniform and lunch policy there. Their diary also helps to see how much activities like festivals, special weeks etc they have. Ours also publishes all inset days for the year beginning of autumn term.

Then, trust your gut. What's better, a healthy lunch policy or a feel good atmosphere a the school. The question in the end is "do I feel my child will like it and learn"? We put three schools down our list because the felt like too much SATs and not enough learning is fun.

I've been to see a couple of schools already and have adjusted my questions accordingly (especially after making a tit of myself and marking myself as being from the private system by asking if the kids move classrooms for subjects or if the teachers move round - not having known that there is one teacher for all subjects in the state system... oops).

Anyway, it's now a case of my getting a general vibe about the school - whether the kids seem happy, whether they are communicating easily with the staff members and what facilities are on offer.

I read the OFSTED reports and if there are areas specified for improvement there then I ask about those.

I ask what they expect the average child to be able to do in terms of literacy and numeracy by the end of reception and what help they have in place for the very able and those who are struggling (have not had a satisfactory answer yet as to what is in place for the able so far).

Even though we only have one school that we are likely to get a place at, I am looking at all those within a possible distance because I may wish to go for a waiting list place if there is a school I particularly like. It's also useful to pick out my 'over my dead body' options.

In any case, just as you pay in the private sector by getting out the cheque book at the beginning of term, you pay through your taxes every month for the state sector so no reason why you shouldn't expect to have any questions you want answered.

yes, it's not so much what you ask - it's how you read between the lines of the answers.

You say "what do you put in bookbags" or whatever but then you use the answer to figure out whether you like the head.