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?”

How is it entitled to ask questions of a potential school? So as parents we are supposed to just go off banal Ofsted reports and the show the school put on at open evenings?
Bollocks to that! The % of girls doing STEM is important to us therefore we have a right to ask. It also shows a school's real commitment to equality.

And the arrogance in your answer is why we excluded a school whose data manager had the same attitude.
The data managers in other schools were more than happy to discuss my questions. It is very hard as a parent to get a true picture of the school especially around equality of access to STEM for girls etc.
I'm very pleased my DD goes to an open and transparent school that welcomes questions.

Ask the pupils present at the open evening about toilets, behaviour, how the teachers are, supply etc. Pupils don't 'spin' the same way staff do.

re Uniform. it isn't uniform so much as uniform policy, how rigid they are.
Also ask re homework policy (and then ask pupils about the reality.)

Every school is struggling with vacancies, even desirable schools in desirable areas. You would be better off writing to your mp and supporting strike action

As others have said, keep an eye on vacancies (not just on tes which is expensive but on the DfE jobs website too or the school website). Ask teachers at open days how long they've been at the school.

Ask students showing you around how often they have supply teachers.

But honestly even if the school is okay now, things can change a lot in a year. If you want qualified subject specialists teaching your children then there needs to be a national increase in the number of teachers.

Writing to my MP is something I’ve already done. However, Even if there is political change - it’ll take years to feed through and have impact, by which time my child will be essentially finished with school. So i must work out which of the options available to me is best for my child. And getting past the glossy veneer of a website and even a standard open evening is vital to that assessment.

There have been some excellent suggestions on this thread, which I will be using.

School open events/parent contact events so often involve everything in the window and nothing in the stock room. Your best bet is to find people with children currently there if you can. Is there a local Facebook group or other primary school people with other DC?

@twistyizzy

Just out of curiosity: why the percentage of the girls doing STEM would matter to you?
I would understand the questions about STEM at school and if it is a school where STEM is important etc , but why the gender distribution would matter?

Look at staff turnover

Because:
A) historically girls are 'discouraged' from STEM especially at A level and schools are supposed to be addressing this but in reality most aren't
B) my DD leads heavily towards STEM and I want this interest nurturing by teachers/school who will push girls in these areas
C) it tells me a lot about the aspirations of the school for girls ie do they have high expectations of all pupils in all subjects

@RedFluffyPandaat the school we chose the Headmaster himself answered my questions and , as a parent of 2 girls, his enthusiasm for widening participation in STEM for girls in his school was infectious. This was backed up by meeting 3 of the science teachers who were all female, thereby ensuring girls have STEM role models.

My goodness how " historically" we talking about😵? I will risk to say that maybe in the 60ties of a previous century they could have such anachronistic way of thinking to discourage girls from STEM...
We are in XXI century and a lot has changed.... The schools should not push to STEM girls in any other way than boys. Every teacher from every subject should work on inspiring their students regardless of gender.

So explain why in 1 local secondary school only 4 girls sat the Triple Science paper last year? You may want to think things have changed but in reality they haven't! I don't know why I'm having to defend wanting my DD to be encourages to develop her love of certain STEM subjects 🙄
STEM is only 1 example but a very important one in today's job market, not to mention future jobs.

@RedFluffyPanda As far as I am aware there is still an issue in mixed sex schools with science being seen as a 'boys' subject and fewer girls continuing with it than at single sex schools. It may take a proactive from schools to counter this.

@ twistyizzy I think there should not be a special encouragement for girls and the STEM role models for both genders should be equally promoted. You don't need to defend your daughter enthusiasm to STEM with me:) ans personally I would find a school eho discourages girls to do STEM at least weird. I personally believe that those schools hardly exist. Probably in most of schools they don't care to encourage enough anybody. A lot depends on the teacher.

We cannot yet imagine what jobs will be needed on the market when our kids will be adults. With the AI advancement a lot will be automated and new roles will be created.

OK you don't think it happens but I beg to differ as I have examples of it occurring.

Just listen to the tory darling K Birbalsingh on the subject (question about take-up of Physics by female students) - “I just think they don’t like it. There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think they would rather not do.”

I looked her up and basing on this article I wouldn't be concerned about handful of people who think as it was 1923 and not 2023...

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/apr/28/no-girls-are-not-put-off-by-hard-maths-katharine-birbalsingh

I looked also for her roots. I expected it to me Middle East but she was born in NZ and raised in Canada ... Shock

That quote gets taken out of context so much it's a joke. That woman has done more for inner city kids and attainment that most people.
If you don't like her, fair enough, but taking things out of context isn't fair.

Again, guardian should hang their head in shame for their irresponsible journalism, if they can even call it that.

Where I could find the original context where she said it?

It's here, I used it as the basis of a Master's assignment. My personal thoughts are that it was an unhelpful thing for her to say.
https://committees.parliament.uk/event/13461/formal-meeting-oral-evidence-session/

Many thanks

I agree. It was definitely unhelpful and given her position at the time, quite stupid. She was talking about the cohort of girls in her school, not girls overall though. Even so, it is one of the things she's said that has irked me, but the twisting of it is annoying too. People aren't perfect, and she has said and done some brilliant things for education.

But she was at the time the Chair of the Social Mobility Commission so lots of people might believe she actually knows what she's talking about. She has totally internalised the misogyny that says "girls don't do physics; maths is hard". It is literally what she said. It was widely reported, not just in the Guardian. She tried to row back afterwards. "Brilliant things for education" - I disagree. She seeks and basks in publicity.