Applications for secondary school

[Jellypudmum]

My ds is currently in year 5 so due to start secondary school in Sept 2015.
When do you apply for secondary school places and when do you hear re allocation of place?
There's been no mention of open evenings etc from any of the local secondaries? Am I being premature?

State? By end Oct and hear 3 March.

And open evenings are usually Sept/Oct.

It is worth having a look on the local Secondary schools websites in June as some of them have informal info evenings in July before they break up.

Ours also do taster days towards the end of Y5

Private schools often have open days in June time. With entrance exams the following January. State schools have open eves in Sep-Oct. Our application deadline is around 28 Oct I believe.

I would look at the local secondaries websites now, and get a feel. You can also ask for a tour. Then open days etc. tend to be mainly in September (sometimes in the summer). I had visited all my considered schools by this stage in year 5 with my first child, I then went to open days etc. with my child in September. I have repeated the September visits with each subsequent child.

Application deadline will be 31st October results are 1st March or next working day if that's a weekend.

We did visits in year 4 and then repeated in year 5. Some were July most were September/October. Annoyingly some were on the same evenings but schools usually are quite accommodating for extra visits.

Schools will advertise dates on their websites and through local primaries.

It's a good idea to do the open evenings, for the headteacher's speech and see the school at it's shiny best, but also book a tour on a normal day, to see the school in action.