Choosing school

[purpleme12]

My little girl will start full time school September 2018.

Should I start making appointments to look round now?

Also can someone please help about what I should be looking for, what questions to ask? I feel like I had an idea when I was looking round nurseries when she was a baby and I feel like I don't have a clue now.

Also it's just leaving be tearful

Applications open mid-October and close around the 15th January. You can usually apply online. Some LAs will write to you if you're registered with a local GP, but not all do so do check out your LA website to see how it is done locally. The website should also have information about the admissions criteria and how oversubscribed each school is, but this probably won't be up for the current year yet.

With visiting schools, you might be able to go before the summer- my HT is currently doing a few prospective parent tours for people who haven't got their first choice for this September. So it may be worth calling and asking, but more likely they will ask you to call back in September and then offer you some autumn dates.

For questions to ask, think about the needs of your child, for instance is the outdoor area important to you, or special needs provision or the opportunity to do extra-curricular activities? I would always ask about their Y1 phonics check results and also where their pupil premium funding goes.

Our LA produced a handy admissions booklet that had details on every school such as wrap around care, the numbers admitted each year, religious affiliation plus info on how many children were admitted on each criteria (distance, sibling etc) and how far away the furthest child lived so you can see how you would have fared had you applied last year

I think this came out in Oct and the deadline for applying was Jan . Open days were in the period in between

Open days are usually October/November time. Forms have to be in usually around Mid January.

Your local council website will put dates and info up in the next few weeks for deadlines etc. If you are unsure of open days call and ask in mid sept.

We called after September, booked appointments and visited the schools. Our council has on their website all admission data so you can see how each school was allocated for the last few years and which are over or under subscribed.

We filled all 3 choices, including our catchment school and got our first choice out of catchment.

We choose based on the feeling of the school and word of mouth from local parents, and which we felt would be the best fit for our daughter

You can look at how places were allocated for September 2017 on your county council or local authority's web site before you apply later this year.
Look at schools you hear good things about and/or are local but you should almost always include your nearest school as one of your choices. Distance is the criteria that most affects allocations for most first time parents. So if your local school is 'Good' but you love 2 other schools a mile away, you put those as choices #1 and #2. Then you put your local school in as #3.
If you put 3 schools that are a mile or more away, you may fail all of them on distance. If you don't get one of your choices, you go to clearing and get the places nobody chose.

I asked today about open days but they don't tend to do them. So I guess I'll be going to visit. Don't know if it depends on the area as to whether they do open days

Hi purpleme12,

For us the first considerations/ questions were around will this school work for us - so can I easily get to and from work, is there breakfast club and after school club if we need it, are these places limited (as they are in some schools) or is it more of a dead cert we'll get a place in breakfast and after school club if we need it, is it handy for younger siblings' nursery, for schools between 0.5 and 1.0 mile away, are they on a bus route as, although we'll manage the walk there and do this sort of distance every day already to the nursery, will need a bus back as starting primary is exhausting etc. etc. We didn't bother with anywhere more than a mile away.

From there, and most importantly to us, do the children look engaged, energetic and happy (we visited a lot of schools, mostly at the same time of day and it was amazing how wildly this fluctuated - at a couple of the schools kids looked positively bored), do the staff interact well with each other, did the head teacher seem approachable.

And finally, did it 'feel right' and could we imagine our daughter there

We only felt the last 'fit' at the last school we visited. And then we knew that was the one for us. It wasn't the best ofsted or the best results but we knew it was the one.

There are a million other detailed questions that can be asked, but this was how we approached it, rightly or wrongly!

There were also some teachers on some of our visits (looking for their kids) and it was interesting to see their approach which was to get down and chat to the children, rather than ask the teachers questions.

Hope this helps. And good luck.

Thank you finding it rather scary to be honest. And scary because ultimately it won't be down to me really

Hi there,

In hindsight I'd say, look for a 'every child is different and we value that individuality and work with you to achieve the best for your child' attitude vs a 'one size fits all, and we know best' attitude. You can attempt to determine this by asking questions about how they deal with children who struggle, or who find it hard to behave, or who find it hard to separate from their parents, for example. It doesn't matter if your child has none of these issues, it still gives you an idea of how they respond to children who are in any way 'different'.

Also in hindsight I'd look for a 'happy, well settled children who feel safe learn best' attitude versus any strong emphasis on results at all costs.

I would ask about homework policies, and how reading is taught (do they use a good phonics programme). Any indication of substantial amounts of homework apart from reading, or of a mixed methods approach to reading, would tell me that the school likes to do things 'the way they have always done it' and/or the way they think parents want it to be, rather than following evidence of what is best for the children.

I found when looking at schools that they differ a lot as to how 'child-led and play-based' they actually are in reception, and as to how quickly they become more formalised and 'work'-heavy.

Some things we decided on a 'doesn't feel right' basis. One school we really wanted to like (our closest) but for some reason we couldn't quite nail down, we just found it sad and depressing.

In the end, we put a 'good enough' school that is within walking distance over the school we liked best, but would have required a drive.

Make sure that your closest school is on the list even if you don't like it. Unless your closest school has additional criteria like religious attendance which you don't qualify for, in which case put down your nearest school that is likely to be undersubscribed as your 3rd preference. If you use all three options for outstanding schools that are too far away for you to qualify then you could end up in the poo.

Do not forget that you are not "making a choice" you are "expressing a preference" - there is a huge difference.