What did your chosen school provide in terms of information sessions prior to enrolment

[anney]

Your DH may be correct and they may be trying to actively discourage people from applying there. DDs school had its largest prep enrolment with her year and then another big year after that so the had over 100 children entering each year but only 60 going out so it does not take long for a school to grow quickly. Apparently Dept education does not like to put a ceiling on numbers or "zone" primary schools so schools have deal with the issue themselves.
DDs school started to not do the regular advertising of tours and telling parents who were coming a long distance to consider their closest school.
The year that we looked for schools for DD we only went to one school tour and luckily it was great!

[wysiwyg]

Your DH may be correct and they may be trying to actively discourage people from applying there. DDs school had its largest prep enrolment with her year and then another big year after that so the had over 100 children entering each year but only 60 going out so it does not take long for a school to grow quickly. Apparently Dept education does not like to put a ceiling on numbers or "zone" primary schools so schools have deal with the issue themselves.
DDs school started to not do the regular advertising of tours and telling parents who were coming a long distance to consider their closest school.
The year that we looked for schools for DD we only went to one school tour and luckily it was great!

The school is already zoned, as are most of the ones in the area (we are in the zone for this one). When they do the Wed tours they have different ones whether you are in or out of zone. There is quite an issue in the area in general because they keep having to change the zones due to numbers but are really not solving the problem.

Is not very good to try put people off who do live in the zone like me. As others surrounding schools are also zoned is not like I have a big choice within state system, even if I was prepared to travel further which am not.

You know when the assistant head attitude towards me changed, when I said I had been to their school fête many times. After that she was far more interested in giving me information. Very bizarre.

[anney]

Sounds like they might be a bit weary of selling themselves if they don't need to. Great that her attitude changed when she realised you actually lived nearby and were interested in the school.
We are looking at a zoned secondary school in your area and had the experience where the assistant head seemed to have a script and did not want to give us any extra. the students did the tour and she actually asked us not to ask the students questions, to leave them all to her for the end of the tour. Was strange - how do you go on a tour for 30 minutes and not ask any questions?

[wysiwyg]

Sounds like they might be a bit weary of selling themselves if they don't need to. Great that her attitude changed when she realised you actually lived nearby and were interested in the school.
We are looking at a zoned secondary school in your area and had the experience where the assistant head seemed to have a script and did not want to give us any extra. the students did the tour and she actually asked us not to ask the students questions, to leave them all to her for the end of the tour. Was strange - how do you go on a tour for 30 minutes and not ask any questions?

I think from past threads I remember which school you were looking at, zoning and the demand seems to be an increasing problem round here. As long as the attitude (we are great no need to try to do better) isn't carried over to the students I can live with it. I am just jealous about friends going to other local schools and hearing really great presentations from enthusiastic teachers and staff - I am quite interested in 'learning' in general, and not so interested in the school facilities so the tour is less interesting (it is random who you get for the tour and the parent who did the tour for us yesterday evening from her memory of the morning, said she learnt more from the 20mins in the hallway then the tour). If they had ever advertised or put on their website that they did tours on Wednesday mornings I could have gone while I have had two weeks between contracts, but now I am starting a new job so is far more problematic.

Well next year when I am part of the 'club' I will be encouraging them to do something better (they don't do that well on parental satisfaction measures compared to some schools) - and I know the other family in this block who are new to Australia and have a son there, weren't told that school finished an hour early on the last day of term, and when they got there after being phoned up they just said "Well in Australia we always finish an hour early on the last day of term".!!

[Amaunet]

"Well in Australia we always finish an hour early on the last day of term".!!

This is something I've never heard of - and I'm Australian AND a teacher!

[Amity]

This is something I've never heard of - and I'm Australian AND a teacher!

We always have

[Amaunet]

We always have

Maybe a Victorian thing?