Secondary school visits - what should I REALLY be asking about?

[Tinker]

Eldest will be going into Y7 next year.

I'm 99.9% sure which school she'll be going to but feel I should be asking some probing questions. My mind always goes blank or I sound inane.

Any suggestion gratefully received.

Thanks

What's a chocolate tea pot botherer?

I think Marina is making a joke about the "Celestial Teapot", which is a philosophical conceit invented by Bertrand Russell to illustrate the impossibility of proving "non-existence."

For my favourite OP Dawkins-botherer UQD She e-mails me pictures of him you know
No Bertrand Russell pics please tinks

I'm at the

Tinker - if you do want to look at the other school as well they will probably let you look round another time. We went to three open evenings last week (I was exhausted by the end of it!) and all of them stressed how happy they were to let you come and have another look round (in daytime, with lessons going on - which might be more useful than a open evening anyway).

Good luck. Fwiw, we just got a good 'feel' for one - and luckily, ds1 did too

Thank you moo. Did you take your eldest with you? Presume that's ok.

To the open evenings? Yes, he came too. I suppose if you wanted to take your dd in school-time you would have to ask her primary school for permission - but I would have thought they would be OK with that. Our primary school seems quite keen to make the transition to secondary as smooth as possible - and conflicting open evenings seems a legitimate reason to need a school-time trip.

If you're being shown around by a pupil, ask them what the best and worst thing about the school is.

MB, do schools usually choose the student guides carefully or do they let any pupil do it? The reason I'm asking is that at both the schools I have seen so far (which have a mixed rep), we were shown around by the loveliest teenage boys, would happily have adopted them all on the spot! Don't know if they were deliberately chosen to make the school look good lol!

KTeePee - yes students to 'help' at open evening are hand-picked. At our Open Evening we would have about 10% of students present.

We leave it mostly up to the children, we let children with a range of abilities do it, as long as they want to do it. But I don't think that we would let a child do it if they were unreliable. One of the best, and most popular lads to do this for us had down's syndrome. He did a magnificent job (and I'm not being in the slightest bit patronising here) and was one of the best advertisments we ever had for the school.

Some of the 'best' lads on open evening have been onces who are quite challenging in class, but they rose to the occasion with great style

I've only been to one Open Evening and loathed it. It was horrendously crowded and busy, and you couldn't get a feel for the school at all.

We had already been to look round this school as part of the regular school day, and that was far more interesting and realistic.

We only went to the Open Evening to give ds1 a chance to have a look at the school.