What should you look out for?
By Rory Edwards
Rory Edwards is a local parent, teacher of 29 years and a school governor. He offers us an insight into certain dilemmas parents might face throughout the school year.
By the time you read this, the summer holi-days will soon be over and the new academic year will be starting again. Despite everything else that’s been happened this summer, the heatwave, the cost of living crisis to name just two, I hope you’ve managed to have some sort of relaxing time since schools were last open in July.
I’ve seen many posts on social media where parents have asked about a certain school. Having read the replies, I would still have no idea whether a school was “good” or not. The problem is that everyones’ experiences are different and comments like “it’s been great for my kids” versus “my kids didn’t like it and nor did I” don’t help because generally there’s an equal number of each. This article is aimed at those parents and families with children in years 5 and 6. Why year 5 you may ask? To be honest, it’s never too early to look at sec-ondary schools and given that your children may spend 7 years there, it’s worth visiting a school more than once.
It’s also worth making a list of what you want from a school before you visit them, for exam-ple, how they support pupils with special needs, exam results or pastoral care. This way you have something to look for when walking round. So here is my list of 4 things to look for when visiting schools:
Visit more than one school: You may have your heart set on one school but if you don’t meet its criteria (e.g. religious, distance from school), you may not get that place. Visit oth-er schools as you will need to apply to more than one school. You should also visit schools on open days as the open evening. This will give you an impression of the day-to-day life of students rather than the polished open even-ing experience.
Are the facilities well looked after? When I’ve spoken to friends about this, I’ve said to look out for peeling paint or notice boards that have or haven’t been updated. However, if you get a chance, get your children to take a look inside the toilets and see if they’ve been looked after just as well as the rest of the school.
How do the students behave? If you’re be-ing shown around a school on an open evening or open day, the chances are the particular student showing you around is on their best behaviour. Watch the other students and see how they are behaving when they are not su-pervised by teachers. This tells you a lot about the pride that those students have for their school.
What extra-curricular activities are there? I’ve mentioned this before, but this is a great way for students to meet other like-minded students and make new friends. Look for how many aren’t sports based (sorry to PE staff here), it means that teachers are willing to give up their free time to do these and tells you a lot about how staff feel about the school.
There are other things to look out for but just not enough space to write about each one here: the aforementioned pastoral and/or SEND sup-port, the Headteacher’s vision for the school, what students and teachers say about the school, exam results.
Lastly, don’t forget to ask your children what they think of each school. It’s easy to forget that they’re the ones who have to go there eve-ry day!