Tips to help find your child's secondary school

• Talk to parents who actually have children at the school rather than someone who has heard something about it.
• Trust your instinct. Take your child with you to visit your top three schools to gauge their reaction to the “feel of the school”.
• On open days talk to the pupils, not just the staff. If a child shows you round talk to them about their experience, they are usually brutally honest when they are away from staff!
• Walk away from the main show areas. What does the school look like, what does the school ‘feel’ like – is it a place you feel comfortable in, what are the toilets like, they say a lot about a school!
• If you can manage it visit away from the main open evening, watch the school operating on a normal day.
• Think about your child’s journey. Secondary school is exhausting at first, a long journey can put stress into the situation. Think about the return journey after sports or music events in the evening and the pressures this may put on family life.
• Fill in all the places on your application form for the borough. Putting just one school first won’t make it more likely that you get it and could mean that if you don’t get it they can allocate you anywhere.
• Put the open days and deadlines for applications in your diary in the summer holidays so that you don’t miss them.