School tour today- advice?

[Bearlionfalcon]

Just wondering what I should look out for, good questions to ask? I’m weirdly nervous - it’s the best of our local options on paper so I really want to love it - but I don’t really know what I’m looking for and keen not to miss what people think are potential red flags / etc! Thank you!

Are the students engaged in their lessons.
Do they look like robots walking around school or conversely hooligans?
If shown round by a student
. would they recommend it to a younger sibling or cousin.
. Homework
. Best and worst things
Are any teachers who interact with your child friendly and approachable.
Does school look well cared for
Are toilets single sex

Do they do all subjects options eg music drama
What languages do they do eg just one or both

Although that might not be important to your child of course

But as with most of these things I went by the the feel of the place

Is there an atmosphere of purposeful learning.
Is there evidence of pupils work

Are you allowed everywhere or are there areas you’re directed away from.

Do you feel comfortable there.

You can see stats on their website. You can’t get the feel of the place unless you visit.

a lot of the questions I asked were more to do with support for SEN - DS2 is autistic with ADHD. It’s always good to ask about pastoral care and support for children who may be struggling for whatever reason though, as well as things like their bullying policy. I asked about support for kids joining the school - what’s in place to help them make the transition to secondary, as even the kids you think will be fine can struggle in the early days.

extra curricular activities - do they have a broad spectrum of activities, or like one school we looked at, it is mainly geared to sports.

do they have students there to speak to? At our schools open evening they had students giving a talk to parents, and then had them available to chat to us when we looked around. I also clocked how they interact with the teaching staff. One thing that was mentioned in the talks was the stability of staffing and their low turnaround.

Thanks so much for these, the point about how students interact with teachers is such a good one @BlueRidgeMountain

I always used to ask the teachers if any of the staff send thier own kids to the school
or whether they would, assuming that was an option

I also liked to ask both kid and staff how good the behaviour is. So ask the kids if there is any bullying (I once asked my DCs if there was any bullying at their school and they both looked at me in bewilderment and said "of course not". The reason for this is because if the staff are not on top of behaviour, learning is not going to happen. It is the top priority.

I also like to ask the kids in particular what the head is like. I try to ask the staff that but they are usually more guarded. Having a good head is another top priority.

Another thing that is worth doing is to stand outside the school at hometime to see if the behaviour is ok.

Try to get an older kid to show you round y10 or above. You'll get much more sense of tben.

@Bearlionfalcon it's not clear whether you are visiting during the school day, or at an open evening.

Lots of good suggestions already made. I have a few more:

How long is the lunch break, and is it staggered between years?
Are there clubs at lunchtime, or are they before/after school?
Is there actually time to queue, buy and eat lunch?
Are students confined to certain areas at break times?
Is there any setting or streaming, and at what point is that introduced? Is it easy to move up/down sets?

Try to be there at change of classrooms or break, you see the behaviour out of class.

Is it a weekly or fortnightly time table?

If your child is female then ask how many girls take computer science and ask to look at a class. Male dominated subjects often spread the girls out so they are sitting between two boys. It's basically using girls to police boy's behaviour.

What range of subjects can they do? Are they using ebac? or progress 8?

If your child is better at arts than sciences will they be forced to take science GCSEs at the expense or arts subjects.

On the lunch break thing, some schools split the lunch break, some schools have a lunch break in the middle of the lesson.

Thanks so much for all the suggestions which were so incredibly helpful.

This was an open morning in the school day with a tour by two pupils in year 8 and a presentation by the Head - there is an open evening apparently where we can ask questions of the staff.

So we were greeted in a very friendly way by staff and pupils and we were shown around by two sweet but rather shy y8 girls ( it was a girls school) and so I didn’t glean as much as I hoped from them. They seemed to feel the best thing about the school was the after school clubs (of which to be fair there are a lot) but that seems to be the only place where they do anything very fun or creative. They did seem happy and there was an atmosphere of real seriousness about learning for sure. Maybe a bit too serious? They said the school was strict and they had a lot of homework. The head was quite impressive and gave very convincing presentation about the school’s academics and the way girls were expected to develop. If his statistics are to be believed the school substantially outperforms the national average in terms of grades. It was quite impressive for a comprehensive. However, what I was really disappointed by was the lack of emphasis on art and creativity. The girls said they had two lessons a week which rotated between art, drama and design and technology - so they basically do only a term of each. I was really surprised and disappointed by this - is this the new normal? My overall impression was that it was a well run and orderly school with a good Head where girls seemed fairly happy and could get on and learn and do well, but I got the distinct impression they’d basically squeezed art and creativity out of the curriculum in order to prioritise academics. There was also no mention at all of SEND. Which is a shame as my eldest DD is dyslexic but loves art and is very creative!! It’s not the ideal match for her … but maybe it will be ok? I’ll go to the open evening and ask about SEND and about artistic opportunities. Our other local options are… not great.

There are so many great questions on this thread. I’m going to compile a list of them and collar a teacher with them all at the open evening. Poor teacher 🤣

Also, such a good point about seeing what they are like after school. During the tour today and also during my tour of the other (not very impressive) one I saw last week, I noticed the tour was carefully timed to ensure we didn’t see the time when pupils were moving between lessons!

The lack of arts / creativity is probably due to progress 8 but it is a real shame they don't do more.

Back in the 1980s at my high school we did a full year of cooking but needlework and art were only studied for half the year. So 6 months with no art (can you tell I'm still bitter? I hated cooking and needlework).

That's exactly what I feel! This timetable means they will only do art for one term of the year, not even half! We had art twice a week in my secondary! Drama was separate but we did that all year, D and T was separate too though that did rotate around different things. I'm really saddened by it. I think it's so short sighted. Those are the things my DD excels at and what I suspect she will ultimately choose to study at college/ university - if they're barely on the timetable I really fear her losing her enthusiasm for school.

Too much too learn, not enough hours in the day. Plus lack of art teachers etc.

I'd be more concerned about how they support your DDs dyslexia than worrying about the art curriculum though (as long as they have good arts options for GCSE).

It isn't a universal approach to the curriculum, at my childs secondaryin KS3 per fortnight they have:
2 periods of art
2 periods of music
1 period of design technology
1 period of food studies
1 period of drama
These continue all year for all three years of KS3. There may or may not be schools offering this approach in your local area and it has to be weighed up against other factors. My DD enjoys having a varied broad curriculum, but it is just one factor. We live in an area where for most parents and students there is really only one accessible school so you just have to go with the curriculum offer.

This sounds so much better to me. Thank you. I agree it’s not the only thing that matters and I’m sure @TheNightingalesStarling is right that I should focus on what the dyslexia support is like. The thing is - how will I KNOW what the dyslexia support is like? I’m sure they’ll say all the right things but there’s no objective measure of it, is there? In my experience schools talk a good game but whether support will actually materialise once she is there is another matter.

Whereas it’s absolutely clear from the way they are timetabling the kids that art, DT and drama are not a priority - particularly compared to the example @Owlbookend shared.

Does it have an actual curriculum breakdown on the website. My children would tell you truthfully they only do Art one term... but there's 3 hour slots a week of creative stuff (drama is separate) but it rotates through, art, design, textiles, photography, dance, food, culture etc a lot wider range.

@TheNightingalesStarling yes it does, and it is confusing - the document would suggest they do art all year but the pupils were very clear that wasn’t the case and they ‘carousel’ through different subjects in turn out of art/ tech / drama.

Even notwithstanding that, the amount of detail on the art curriculum is strikingly thin compared to others locally!

Attaching (I hope) the entire summary for years 7-9…

Compared to this at an academy in the same borough…

https://shoreditch.cola.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/WIP_Curriculum-Map-NEW-KS3-5-ART-24-25.xlsx-CMap.pdf

It might be that they’ve just put more depth online at the latter school, obviously but it does seem quite striking. I need to drill into it more at the open evening

Sorry that image wasn’t very clear - this might be better

For the dyslexia support ask if they have any dyslexic teachers. I'm dyslexic and as standard my PowerPoints are on a pale blue back ground but the background can be changed for a particular student, so in one class I taught they had a yellow background.

I will email PowerPoints and handouts to dyslexic students, usually 24 hours before the class. A lot of my handouts are 'gapped' ie they have a space to put notes, so if anyone is using a laptop they have the handout on the screen in front of them.

Obviously handouts are made available on different coloured paper depending on who is in the class.

My default font is 'lexia' on PowerPoints and handouts for everyone. I try not to clutter the PowerPoint, if I can, I put in visual clues.

These are really simple things I can do, so I do them.

Oh and I wear my blue lenses, I get a lot of questions about why I'm wearing sunglasses, I just say they help me read because I'm dyslexic. I had a student who 1 month in to the course started wearing her purple lenses.