I wish I knew .... about my local secondary schools before I applied.

[WFMum]

I am interested in what other parents have found out about their child's secondary school which they wish they knew before the child started. My friends son is unhappy that they have to pray three times a day at his catholic school. We did not know that before.

Kitties,Sparkling - do you think you could have known that before your dcs started at their original school?
great thread by the way.

am particularly at the setting with other schools for all subjects based on one VR test!!

I can say honestly nothing, DS1 in Y8 and and Y7 was great, school great at providing info and communicating, he's loved it made loads of new mates and finds the whole secondary school way suits him so well eg: more male teachers, seperate sujects lessons, moving about classrooms, more personal freedom, being treated more like an adult that a school child. It's weird being so hands off after primary school but you get used to it and we get a 24 hrs response to any issues and can email all of his teacher directly. Some of the things he says would bother me, like he's off to an away football match after school but does no know where (I do because I have the list) but he's not bothered with stuff like that! I think you have to remember it is their journey not yours.

DS1 went up with all his friends tess. but he came home on the transfer day they did in the July and actually said he hated it then. I thought it was just the change and he'd settle in but he left the next May after the situation became too much.

I now have two Dc at two different High schools, so I can now do comparing which isn't always a good thing.

DS1 has a locker at his, DS2 doesn't. Life is so much easier with a locker....

Tess, if I'd looked really, seriously looked at the not so local school, it would have been clear that it was a better fit for DS, yes.

However, at the time, we probably wouldn't have let that outweigh the local school's excellent reputation, the fact that all his friends were going there, and the fact that it's the only one the bus goes to.

In retrospect we could have listened more carefully to the one set of friends who said their son had been miserable at the catchment school and had moved. What a school does in response to miserable or angry children is pretty important.

Mines would be how much bullying actually really went on in his initially secondary school , and how poorly the school manage this . At the open evening when you ask about this they actually talk the talk but in reality don't deliver on what they say.

Glad we moved schools .

I would have liked to know that the English teaching department was in chaos which would lead to my dd1 being in a special measures school in her gcse year, then the further chaos of all the various and often overlapping initiatives to get the school back out if special measures. Still undecided about dd2 who has just started in year 10 and I'm monitoring situation very closely with a view to moving her