Is this normal in secondaries? Year 7 induction

[Mobley52]

My DD had an induction day earlier this week at the secondary she is due to go to in September.

She said a lot of the older children were not very nice to their group while they were there - shouting names at them, pointing and laughing, pushing in the corridors.

If you have dc at secondary would this be normal or am I right to worried that the school might not be as nice as I thought?

I'm wondering whether I'm out of touch and this is sort of behaviour in most schools these days.

DD is not going to her catchment school because we felt this one would be a better fit but I'm now concerned I'm separating her from the majority of her classmates for a school that will be equally bad

I don’t think this is normal at all. Sounds horrible.
Did this happen to people when they were at school? It didn’t at mine!

Yes. Did the children not gave a senior pupil to squire them round the school? And take them to and pick them up from classes?
Most schools have an arrangement like that.

@Teateaandmoretea our Yr6 weren't that cocky as a huge city primary. They certainly weren't on transition days. Far from it

@Mobley52 I'd honestly try and ask her if it was just one group or several different groups. If the later then that's not good and would concern me.
Do you know any other new Yr7 parents to compare notes? It would be very unlikely to happen our ours with Y6 transition but there was bits of jostling Yr7 in Sept for sure.

DD wasn't too concerned about it all - she came home and said she had a good day but the older children weren't very nice. It seems to have been quite a few groups of children when they were moving between areas and at break. DD said they had a teacher with them but they were often up ahead so either not paying attention or not phased if they were.

It's more me being concerned that she is going to this school which is out of our area because I thought it would be a much better option than our local school. The behaviour of the older children gives a bad impression so I'm questioning whether the right decision was made separating her from her primary friends. This school generally has a good reputation while our catching school doesn't.

In terms of the timings there seemed to be a small group consisting of the handful of children from DD's primary and a small group from another primary which this school also wouldn't be the catchment school.
I don't know if they are having extra transition sessions as they wouldn't know as many people or whether they will be doing sessions now for all children.

According to the letters the school seems to have a designated transition room and designated transition teacher so I imagine that is why they are able to hold transition sessions at this point in the year.

I think I will message some of the parents who children also went with DD and see what they thought.

Defo sounds like extra transition days if there are feeder schools. Some do extra days for 'singles' going.
I think most schools have a head of transition and a team to support depending how big the school is. Ours is 300 each year

If that happened at the secondary school I work at and it was reported there would be severe consequences for those students involved.
This would be taken very seriously and students are always warned to be careful and helpful to the younger kids as they transition to secondary school. There are rarely any incidents.

That's horrendous. Ours is a Catholic school, and the 6 feeder primary's all go for 2 days. All report that it is nice and the other children show them around and are really nice to them.

Not normal and would never happen at my DC's schools.

That would put me right off.

Well obviously they won’t be on transition days. I’m on about year 6 behaviour generally and what they are like at home etc. By year 6 they have generally outgrown primary and are ready to move on, but they have another year. Dd2 likened her year 6 class to having 29 siblings.

The point is kids don’t turn into monsters the second they go to secondary like some of the posters are saying.