Rookie question: secondary school open days

[UsqueTandem]

hello all, I apologise for this question as it might have an obvious response but I am new to the British school system, so thank you in advance for your patience :) My DC is going in year 5 in September, so we will attend some open days in the local secondary schools. My question is, should we attend together both the open evenings and the open mornings or are the open mornings only for children who will be in year 6? If I decide to attend a couple of open mornings, is it weird to go on my own without my DC?
Thank you, and apologies once again, I have never done this before and I don't know what is the done thing.

I visited schools on my own in Y5 and made a shortlist. Then took DH and DD to see the ones I liked best and a couple I hadn't managed to see before in Y6.

Very normal for parents to go without children plus I wouldn't pull DC from school for open mornings in Y5.

Thank you so much, it makes sense and that's exactly what I thought, that it might not be a good idea to pull him out of school in Year 5. But wasn't sure if it was standard. I will go and shortlist :)
thank you very much for your response!

No problem.

I found that 9 year olds have a very odd sense of what is important in a school and my DD fell in love/hated a couple over the most ridiculous things (did she like the smell of the school lunch cooking that day).

Going alone means you can then avoid rows over the ones that you have already crossed off the list. Only take them to see ones that you have already pre-approved either in person or on paper.

DH and I went to a few open mornings/tours when DC was in Y5, then as previous poster did, took DC to the open evenings in Y6.

Thank you both, noted and will do the same :)

Are you in an area where you are looking at Grammar Schools at all? It CAN be worth taking a child around a grammar school in Y5 if they're the type of child where they might find it motivating.
Otherwise wait until Y6 to take them with you 🙂

Thank you :) there are no grammar schools in our county so I’ll wait. Thanks for the suggestion :)

How do you find out about the open mornings/days .. Is it just a case of trawling the websites or will the council have a list?

In Y6 we got a list from the council, via our primary school, of all the local open evenings. We looked around in y5 and in y6 as we weren’t sure we could get to all the open evenings, and it was good to get a second run of things.