What do you wish you'd asked?

[Littlemisstax]

We're about to start visiting schools for DD for Reception entry in 2015. We also have DS who will start in 2017.

Has anyone got any questions that they should have asked but wished they had (or think that we should ask)?

I was going to ask about the free school meals and if this has had an impact on the availability of rooms as I've heard of schools losing music rooms as they've been made into space for kids to eat.

DD will be one of the oldest in the year, and I'd be surprised if DS wasn't the youngest child, given his end of August birthday.

Check wrap round care if it's important to you . Apart from that I found the visits spoke for them selves

Check how they teach reading and what early readers they have (needs to be phonics and phonics based books).

Check what level of 'homework' or work at home they expect (reading in yR - when do they start other stuff e.g. spellings, formal written work).

How do you contact the school if needed (e.g. our school teachers are directly accessible for quick messages first thing, and also at the end of most days)

How do they deal with bullying (if they say they never have any then run a mile)

How do they identify strugglers and then provide extra support

Range of extra curricular activities / trips

They help to get a feel for the ethos of the school.

Thanks - keep them coming :)

DD is reading already, so I guess we need to focus on what they'd do with her, but we also need to bear in mind that DS may be different!

how many teachers have left in the last 7years .... your DD will have 7 years there and youll want stability.

how many TAs per class excluding sen support

competitive or non competitive sports day?

which secondary did last years children move up to?

how they teach the outliers-most and least able?

school trips last year?

sfter school clubs?

basically the temptation is to try to imagine what your 4 year old will experience but what matters is what you care about when looking back at the end of ks1 and ks2

Yes look at years 5-6 and how they prepare for high school. Easy to focus on the needs of a 4yr old ..

Ask about sports and enrichment activities further up the school.

I would also want to know about behaviour management.

Do they mix up classes (this is a good thing in my opinion although it does scare parents).

How often are infant and junior children formally assessed sorting the year? Two or three is about right, six is crazy and stresses both children and teachers.

throughout the year

do they have mixed year groups in classes? We turned down one school because they did this because it was a tiny school (classes of Yr 1 and 2 together, and 3 & 4, 5 & 6) and have now found that our school does the same but kept quiet about it. DS is in with nearly 7 year olds and has only just turned 5 - one to watch for your August born boy as well.

In addition to what has already been mentioned I would also consider asking about class structures. If the PAN is 30/60/90 do they ever mix the classes. If it is a small school there will be more than 1 year group per class - how is that currently arranged. If it is school with a PAN of 45/75 how do they split the year groups and classes - is it by age or other determining factor(s).

Most importantly though is the feel you get from the visit. A few schools we visited only allowed prospective parents to visit on scheduled open days and the visits felt very contrived. In one of the schools we were only shown Yr R classes, and in another we were only shown infant classes. Two other schools we visited ran visits on a more ad-hoc basis and the HTs in both of those schools were happy to show us around everywhere, so we got to see EYFS, KS1 and KS2 classes.

I agree about feel. I do think picking (not that we had that luxury!) is very difficult. Lots of people have made good points about thinking how your child will do further up the school, but I would say that you should always bear in mind that schools constantly evolve. My DC are 2 school years apart and have been to the the same schools, but DD's experience is almost entirely different to DS's due to ways the schools have change even over the relatively small space of 2 years.