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

I have not a great perception in some regards to school DD will go to - due to the lack of info and communication I had been hoping that tonight would change it.

I had been told there was an information evening 18:00 to 19:00 - turned up a few other parents loitering outside the office, chat to one who I recognize, by 18:15 we chase down a teacher who was about, she grabs the head (assistant head) who says she has to do another presentation - and really acts like she didn't know we were going to be there - so a parent (who had been to the session this morning) took us round the classrooms and tried to remember what she has been told! At about 18:40 we bump back into the assistant head and she says we can ask her any questions we want (there are maybe 12 parents) and we are just stood in the hall - with other kids and parents wandering about - a few people ask her stuff. I ask if they plan to have any 'official' information evenings - and the answer is yes towards the end of the year when you are enrolled :wall:
Someone asks a few other questions, and then I explain that you know as I haven't been in school a while, and classrooms all look so different was really after some information about how the teaching works these days - particularly foundation. She then did a long spiel about all sorts of bits and pieces - and said some things I thought were very good and appealed to me, and then was 7:00 and was over.

They do tours every Wednesday morning you can go to, but I know other schools do a lot more in terms of communicating the way preps work and the school philosophies - but I really think their attitude sucks. DD will still go there - DH reckons they are trying to put people off on purpose as they are bursting at the seams really, but unless they build another school between us and it that is where she will go.

What sort of info did you get from a school before enrolling? e.g. just a tour, info on their philosophies etc.

There was a school tour and principal interview, the principal interview was very 2 way, that's where we got most of our info

Are we talking primary school? Then nothing.

My children go to a private aka Catholic primary school that is single stream so pretty small. Total kids around 220 from K- Yr6.

No info sessions or tours are provided at the school. When you are granted an interview (interviews take place prior to acceptance of enrolment) you are then invited to tour the school and ask as many questions as you like. Thats it. All the other private primary schools in our area are the same.

High school is different. There are specific tour days and info sessions.

That's appalling. Hardly gives their school a good first impression. Our school (and all the local schools) have an open day in September/October each year where you get a full tour of the school, principal gives a talk and you get a very comprehensive information package to take home. Your kids can come along and they have activities organised for them while you attend the information session. then they put on morning tea for all the parents.

Once the school year starts, they have another information session to explain the learning programs they use.

Wow, that is really poor form from the school.

Due to moving interstate, I have had two primary schools for my eldest. The first school had tours and information sessions prior to enrolment. Then we had one on one interviews with the Principal so he could evaluate DS1's readiness for school and so my DH and I could ask any questions. Once our enrolment was accepted, we then had another 2 group information sessions, one on our own as parents and one with DS so he could ask questions.

We chose the second school when we were still in Victoria, as we were moving to Queensland. The enrolments/administration lady spoke to us by phone and answered any questions we had. We didn't get a tour but had feedback from others in the military community about the schools facilities. Once we had moved, we had a face to face meeting with the Principal as well.

I assumed that you were talking about sessions and tours prior to enrolment?

After acceptance of enrolment there is a half day orientation/info session in term 4 for children entering kindy. In term 1 there are individual info sessions for each class in around week 2.

We are talking primary school. Is Education Week here and most state primary schools round here are doing something. I have heard great things about some other local schools info sessions.

The school probably doesn't need to do anything because people will go there regardless - it is in high demand - but the attitude that they won't bother because they don't have to really irks me.

We have had one 1 hour info session to explain their orientation program (11 x 2.5 hour sessions with a teacher fortnightly beginning in June) and giving an overview of the school. We have another info session at the end of the 11 sessions with more specific info about the school and it's program's, uniforms, canteen, times, processes etc. Its been great, except the info sessions are all during the day, so my DH misses out. Most schools around here also have an evening session.

In all honesty our chosen school doesn't have an official open day. I'm ok with that as we have already been given a tour by the principal a couple of months ago when we enquired about next year for Moo. DH and I had maybe an hour long meeting where I asked many questions :) Then we took Moo for a tour which again was led by the principal. I have exchanged a few emails with the principal lately in regards to enrolment and she has said we are welcome to come by to have as many looks as we like.

There is something in the last term that I assume is for the new foundation kiddies, plus there will be transition days. They have their philosophies etc on their website.

There website is also useless - you cant even find school hours on it. E.g foundation finish at 2:30 for first term. I only know because have asked another parent, who I met at the park.

The school is bilingual, so their teaching methods aren't exactly standard, you would think they would see the need for a little more explanation. Maybe they are trying to put people off they already have 48 siblings alone down for next year, I know the parents association are trying to get siblings who have moved out of zone guaranteed a place again - maybe they don't want new families who are in the zone taking up places.

Of the schools I made enquiries at, half had an Open Day / Night - many of which are this week for education week, and generally much too early for me to realistically get to, or during the day. The rest only do tour during school hours.

So I had to use some annual leave, to do them. :( Rather frustrating, but that was the only way I could do it.

Also, some of the tours I booked in set it up for other parents to do the personal tours at the same time, so you couldn't actually ask all your questions, etc.

But over all, we got the information we needed, and got to see the schools ...

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!

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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!

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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.

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?

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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?

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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".!!

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

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

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

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We always have :)

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We always have :)

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Maybe a Victorian thing?

Our school doesn't do an open day and doesn't do scheduled tours. What they do is a "prospective new parents" talk in May (must be education week, I didn't realise), which is for all prospective parents, prep or otherwise. I did get the feeling that it is geared at prep parents but anyone else is welcome too. They talked a lot about the standard prep day and the prep staff were all there to present bits and answer questions.

The principal said at the time that he was open to tours at any time, to just turn up and he'd be happy to walk any prospective parents and students through the school.

So we took him up on that and turned up one day with the kiddies in tow (all three of them). Sadly he was out for the afternoon but the office staff grabbed two of the house captains, grade 6 kids, who took us around. It was great, we got an interesting perspective from them and could ask them questions. They spoke to DD and took her around by the hand, very cute.

That was about it, pre-enrolment.

And we finish an hour early on last day of term too - another Melb school.

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What they do is a "prospective new parents" talk in May (must be education week, I didn't realise), which is for all prospective parents, prep or otherwise. I did get the feeling that it is geared at prep parents but anyone else is welcome too. They talked a lot about the standard prep day and the prep staff were all there to present bits and answer questions.

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That is what I thought we would be getting the other night, as did the other parents there.

Did you put that to them?? Like maybe something happened and they were supposed to reschedule or something and they didn't get around to it..?

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Did you put that to them?? Like maybe something happened and they were supposed to reschedule or something and they didn't get around to it..?

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Yes I asked a couple of times, to make sure was understood - honestly she looked at me like I had two heads. Once you are enrolled in November there are lots of sessions apparently, and I am free to go on the tour any of the first three Wednesdays in the month - that was their best offer. From what I can work out, they had the open evening Tuesday where existing parents and children could come and have a look at classrooms etc, the grumpy/rude reception lady had told lots of prospective parents this was on - but not made it clear that it was not really for prospective parents (e.g they weren't doing anything special for prospective parents (no foundation teachers there either)). So when we all showed up they had no one there to do anything - hence being taken on a tour by another prospective parent.

I get that mix ups happen fair enough, wouldn't hold that against them - but I would if I were them and had all these interested parents there, at least sat us down somewhere and attempted something - or offered to do it another evening. A comment was made about how they structure the tours or they would always be being disrupted by people who are just vaguely interested in attending but not even in the zone - I wanted to say well why not just hold one prep info evening a year and then you wouldn't have to have people traipsing through every Wednesday!

Yes our school doesn't do tours all year round. It does a whole lot during May to coincide with education week. I am sure they would accommodate individuals for interviews as well.
Hope you get in there and stir them up next year. One thing our school does really well is communication. Weekly newsletter has everything and people would definitely know school finishes early at end of term! Is it a small school?

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Weekly newsletter has everything and people would definitely know school finishes early at end of term! Is it a small school?

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No is about 500, so not small. They have a parent login on their website so maybe inside that it is all fantastic with reams of info :-) Maybe the neighbor doesn't know about the parent portal (I work in IT and the number of times the information is out there but no one has been told - it wouldn't surprise me) - you would expect though that instead of the Australia comment they would explain where he should have seen it and where will get info in future.

The reason I favor a general info evening is - I really am just interested in how it works in general not in the exception cases - (pure Q and A tends to be dominated by the "what if my child is ahead, how does any accelerated learning work" type questions, certainly was the case on Tue anyway) - also I think that you can tell alot about an organization by what they choose to tell you, it shows what they think is important more than just answering of questions. I don't want to be given the answer they think I want to hear based on my question. I want to know what they are really about.

I will just have to quiz some parents, hard when I don't really know any well, I may appear a bit crazy like in the thread on here about first question being about giving birth, but hopefully thay will get rid of my negative attitude.

My youngest DD goes to a different school than my other 2 went to. We did however go to both of the school tours just to compare the 2 and know that we were going to be making the right choice for our DD. The tours were both done very well, but the first school, our old one, they really wouldn't answer questions properly, they changed subjects or went off on another tangent, like they were hiding something! Came away from there thinking it was a great school but not 100% sure! The 2nd school, well, the tour was great, we did the tour with the students and the principal sat down with us afterwards and asked for questions and answered every single question, totally honestly, he was so up front and made sure that we all knew that if we ever had questions or problems that his door was always open! We are in our 4th year there now and what he told us that first day is certainly true! He knows every students name and makes a point of talking to all the students as he passes them in the playground or corridor! Issues that we have had have been dealt with immediately, no mucking around and consequences have been handed out! The teaching has also been great, my DD has had some issues with things and they have handled it all so well.
Go with your gut feeling on a school. Seriously, the first school we looked at, has the better reputation around here for academics but not for the all round stuff, like the well being of the child. This school looks at the child as a whole, yes, they like them to do well academically but its not the only thing!