What questions to discern the reality of a school?

[KleineDracheKokosnuss]

looking ahead to secondary open days, and noting the articles this weekend about how there are hardly any subject specialist teachers available to teach classes - what would you ask to try and identify whether your local secondary is affected and how badly?

How would you need to phrase the question to achieve a useful answer? Would a question about “how many classes are taught by a permanent subject specialist work”? How can we phrase “how Often do the kids get chucked in the hall and told to work from textbooks while a warm body keeps watch?”

To be honest it's very hard to judge schools at the moment. So many brilliant schools are really struggling with recruitment and retention and subject specialists are just luck at this point.
Your best bet is getting an overly honest tour guide who you make jokes with and they'll warm up to you and tell you the reality.

When my DS was moving from year 8 to 9 we received his new timetable. He had multiple teachers for many of his subjects- 3 for maths, 3 for English, 2 for ICT and other subjects too. It is not unusual for there to be teachers who job share but this was excessive and didn’t happen to the same extent with my older children.

Maybe DS just had a very unlucky timetable but if I was looking for secondary again I would want to know how common this is.

Just to add, by the time your child starts, I'm assuming that's Sept 2024, the situation might be completely different so I wouldn't base your decision on the open day. Looks closely at their behaviour policy, ask how it's implemented, check local Facebook groups to see what behaviour is like. Look at their financials, their SEN numbers and workforce numbers in the last 5 years. Look at the exclusion policy and curriculum offer. See if you can get your hands on a recent newsletter. What trips do they offer? Clubs? Policies are a good way to see what the goal of the school is. Unless something seriously changes, you realistically you won't find a school where kids aren't in a hall with a warm body. Subject specialists will be in the exam years if they have any. Unfortunately by the time your child starts, I suspect it'll be even worse. It's depressing and what's even more depressing is the amount of Y6 parents on the strike thread moaning about missed transition days. The transition day is the least of their worries.

Ask the teachers how long they've been there. Ask the kids how many new teachers arrive/old ones leave each year. Look on tes education jobs to see what they are recruiting for.

But it's not possible to predict that. That's not a question they'll be able to answer or something they'll be able to ensure. Your son's school wouldn't have made that timetabling decision because that was their dream. The head can only work with what they've got. KS3 is also not the priority when it comes to timetabling the good specialist teachers. Those are given to exam years. Experienced teachers will often go to Y7 to help them settle and ensure foundations of the behaviour policy are set, and then to exam years.
OP it's very important you understand that there's some things you won't find out on the open day or on Facebook. One of those is the availability of teacher when your son starts. That is bleak everywhere, even in the private sector.

I forgot about the vacancies bit. This is great advice. Check it now, and than again in sept. You can tell when a school is struggling to recruit or a particular department has a high attrition rate when you start to recognise adverts.

Yes, I'd be asking about turnover as well I think, how long do teachers stay when they start, that kind of thing. A generally stable and established staff can support some gaps and weaknesses here and there is it's pretty much the norm now. You could even (although it's not the best time of year to gauge this) Google staff vacancies at the school- I say Google because they may not actually have It up to date on their own website.

It would be quite normal for there to be one or two basic teacher jobs being advertised for September (to replace people who've resigned for the end of the year, generally with staff about to qualify) but if there are loads of head of subject, senior roles, or loads of vacancies in general I would be looking into it further.

I'm not sure if this is area dependent, but in London it's common to have quite a lot of vacancies this time of year, esp outside of COVID and esp in schools with teacher training contracts. It'll be the ones that are on there repeatedly you'd need to keep an eye on.

I don't think you'd necessarily get a straight answer, however you phrased your questions tbh. It would be very easy for them to give you reassuring answers without revealing things that would potentially worry you, or at least to put a heavy dose of spin on their answers. The whole point of open days is that they are a marketing exercise. Schools are very practised at making themselves sound really good.

KS3 is also not the priority when it comes to timetabling the good specialist teachers. Those are given to exam years. Experienced teachers will often go to Y7 to help them settle and ensure foundations of the behaviour policy are set, and then to exam years.

I can understand why that happens - but If the situation really is dire and years 8 and 9 get ‚warm bodies‘ I’m not sure that parachuting in specialists at years 10 and 11 will help. Surely the children will have missed so much content and detail that trajectories will be irreversibly changed.

we’ve got ‚good‘ schools locally according to both Ofsted and results, but for at least the closest school every child I know who goes there has tutoring as well, so it’s near impossible to gauge how things really are.

That’s fair. I did enjoy one recent local school visit where I asked a straight forward questions about pastoral care and the head dodged answering. I’d have thought that would have been an opportunity for him to show off!

Well of course it won't. Hence all the strikes. Unless they're in a situation like you, and actually you're quite rare in that you're thinking far ahead, people don't really appreciate the severity of the situation and are complaining en masse about strikes. Thankfully DD is in Y10. I really feel for parents like you, and even more so for those with kids on y3-5 as I think the peak of the worst of it will be when they're in secondary schools.

Sorry I imagine your child is in Y5, I meant those in y3-5 when your child enters secondary school.

Ask how many kids stay on for 6th form and where they go after A levels.

I suspect that's it's because we know it's likely to be such a shit show (and lots of parents have supported the strikes, lobbied the government and MPs, etc) that we are hanging on by our fingernails to any tiny bits of good we can get for our kids.

We're not supposed to be disappointed about our kids missing out? What an odd POV.

I work at a genuinely great school. It's a Grammar, so it's massively over-subscribed and needs little marketing. But I doubt that the info given to parents on open days would really convey the big differences between it and other schools, because other schools will be saying things that make them sound just as good.

The behaviour difference alone would put a massive gulf between my school and pretty much any other state schools in the local area, but I honestly don't know how a parent would realistically be able to find that out reliably. Schools will just tell you what they are doing to make behaviour good. They will sound convincing. But that doesn't actually tell you what the behaviour is like. It just tells you what the intended effects of the school's policy are. Behaviour is awful at my dc's school. I know because I've taught there. A prospective parent would only be able to find that out by hearsay through current parents.

@Foxesandsquirrels that's very true and I perhaps oversimplified it but I'd still be wary of a school that was having a lot of churn in the middle-senior level, in general. Middle management movement has always been one of the better barometers of a staff 'mood' for me although I have been out of school since around COVID time, coming back in September (!) so I appreciate the situation is likely different nowadays too.

What makes a specialist teacher anyway? A great teacher, teaching outside their degree (in a supportive school with colleagues to draw upon) will trump a poor one teaching to it. Would you be happy with a Physics teacher teaching Maths? Or History teaching Politics (entirely normal). Or History teaching Geography at KS3 (very common). Or RS and Geography teachers teaching Sociology, because the topics they choose directly relate to their specialism. How long does someone have to teach outside of their area to be a specialist?
Appreciate this is not the same as a French teacher with no Science skills being required to take a Chemistry class. But you see how there is no easy answer to the question anyway.
Some of the things that make our school better than average to work in and so people stay:

*low-level but constant levels of staff moving on, so renewal but retained knowledge
*embracing part-time working and not timetabling to give people trapped time
*supportive Faculties where resources are shared and colleagues formally and informally help each other whether new, young, old or experienced
*employing the best person for the job, not the cheapest
*a headteacher who genuinely wants the best for the children and still does some KS4 teaching so they keep their feet on the ground - not a faceless MAT head on twice the salary

What are you talking about? I'm not mentioning disappointment. That's different. Teachers will be disappointed too. What I'm talking about is teachers priorities being questioned, complaints about the endless strikes. Instead of any level of support, it's just filled with parents moaning about a bloody transition day. As it stands your kids will be lucky to see the same teachers in sept that they see on this transition day.

Oh for sure. 'Teacher of' vacancies are less worrying than lots of ' Head of' or '2inc of' vacancies. However middle management burnout is so real atm that I'm not sure even that would be a sign of a and school. It's just a very depressing situation.

@Radishgreen I agree. Tbh it doesn't really matter what the teacher specialises in. If the school have a good PPA policy with a good bank of lesson plans that are used across the department, a good teacher can teach almost any subject. My DD had a DT teacher as her science teacher for a term in Y7. She's in Y10 now and that was her best 'science' teacher to date. She is the deputy head and it was an emergency situation, but she could teach well, scaffold the work and was well supported. She was brilliant. Equally, multiple teachers per subject aren't a huge problem, as long as the school has a good assessment process in place to ensure gaps are spotted and progress is made. Sometimes it can be better than having one teacher that ruins your child's love for the subject completely or makes them very behind.

Asking people with children already there is the best thing to do.
As a pp said a physics teacher teaching KS3 maths isn't a problem but I've seen our school advertising physics teachers for over a year which is a big problem if your child is GCSE with A-level physics ambitions.
I also keep on vacancies at the other school in the same academy trust. They are constantly advertising for English teachers.

I shan't bloody bother reiterating my support on every post I make on those threads then. As have others.

You don't have to?? I didn't personally attack you, or say you didn't support the strikes. I made a general comment to which you replied. You're acting like I've singled you out or something. Chill.

Literally you said 'instead of any level of support....'

You can see why people stop.