Does your school / potential school offer visits during the day?

[Secondaryquandry]

We are currently looking at secondary schools. Some have had open evenings, but on the same day. All the schools have a number of applicants per place, so open evenings involve alot of queuing and waiting, making it difficult to see more than one on the same evening. People suggest visiting in daytime - some schools encourage this and some schools have a blanket “no”, despite similar ratings and applicants per place.

Ring up the school and ask, they’ll probably do smaller group tours. That’s what we did.

Although all of the tours have pretty much stopped now in our Borough as applications need to be in by the end of the month

I did ring up.

It doesn't.
I see it as prioritising the current students and lessening the disruption on them.

It amazes me how many people feel entitled to treat schools as if they are a business with a call centre. Don't phone them unless you have an emergency! Use their email address if you must, but you don't need to because information about open events will be on their school website.

Our Y6 DS has SEN and the SENCOs at the 2 schools we're considering were happy to meet us as parents, give us an hour of their time to discuss needs, and give a mini-tour. Very helpful for us, but because of the SEN our situation may be a bit different to yours, and neither of our schools will be vastly oversubscribed.

Quite a few schools offer smaller tours, further visits, but I don’t know whether that’s an area specific thing or not. At the open days I’ve been to, they generally say it’s a big decision, contact if want to see it in daytime, ask any questions, one even said could just turn up etc. Pretty much all are very oversubscribed. We are at a bit of a midpoint location-wise.

@stoopy- the 3 schools we visited had a specific number to ring to arrange a tour on the school website thank you very much

Yes, almost all the school visits I've done have been during the day. It's more comvenient for me as evening childcare is difficult to arrange but quite simple during nursery hours. I prefer to see schools in action and spending time in a classroom watching a lesson, and seeing pupils move around the school or doing practical lessons. With evening tours you're just seeing the building really.

My school offer open mornings or evenings. Obviously they can’t be doing hundreds of individual day time tours as, quite rightly, they prioritise actual teaching.

Yes, the local schools did daytime tours when we were looking

Yes all our local schools offer open mornings during the day, and I found them far more useful than the open evenings (which were flasher but gave much less insight into the school).

I would be weary of schools that do tours during the normal school hours. They are not prioritising current students. To the poster who mentioned sitting in class rooms to watch lessons. How secure is that for present pupils? I wouldn't want some randoms siting in on my kids classes

I dont understand how offering a tour or open morning 'isnt prioritising current students'?
They are calendared events planned and staffed by staff who are free at that time.
It has zero impact on current students other than some people walking past the classroom door which would be once in the hour the tour is on.

I would be far more concerned with a school that only offers a 'flashy' open evening that isnt necessarily a reflection of what its like on an actual day.

They don't want to walk past the door, they want to see what lessons are like. Not so bad at Secondary, but for 4yos, just starting in Reception it can be extremely stressful.

In Secondary, its just extra disruption they don't need.

(We had to chose DD1d school during Cobso ut was all online .. we realised how pointless the whole thing was when we actually got to see te schools for DD2 and learnt less from open evenings than from all the stuff we found online the first time)

How it is not prioritising current students? They have a few people walking along the corridors outside the classroom for about half an hour. It doesn’t stop their lessons or prevent them learning. The tours do not burst into lessons or expect them to perform in some way. They are not happening all autumn - we are talking about a couple of days a year for a very short time, planned by staff. A few students are allowed to volunteer to be tour guides - okay they miss part of form time or whatever but they get to develop their communication and interpersonal skills instead.

The worse the school the more they want you to see the facilities out of hours with curated children. The better schools are happy for you to see warts and all. It’s not exact but if a school with a questionable reputation limits visits in the school day then 🚩🚩🚩

@TheNightingalesStarling That is not my experience at all.
I run our transition events at the secondary school I work at and have never had parents expect to see 'inside' classrooms while lessons are going on.

We tend to have open doors anyway so you can hear snippets as you walk down a corridor and we pause on corridors to answer questions or point something specific out, so visitors do have chance to 'see' whats going on.

As I said it literally has zero impact on exisitng students.

I always tell parents that we are happy to have them in school on a 'normal working day' as we are happy for parents to see what its 'actually' like in school.

We offer 3 events: open evening and two separate open mornings.

We have had SO MANY extra requests to visit. Our office staff are going to hold a tour for parents who missed the other events.

One prospective parent randomly turned up to a completely unrelated information evening wanting to speak to me (SENDCo).