"They all smiled when they thought nobody was looking," said Isla in the car park, with her coat zipped up to her chin, after the first of the three open evenings. It was the best review of a secondary school I've heard, and it came from a ten-year-old who had spent forty minutes pretending to be bored.
We went to all three in ten days: the one up the road on Tuesday 15 September, the big academy across the ring road on Wednesday 23rd, and the faith school two buses away on Thursday 24th. Linda and Steve had Alfie for the first two, and on the third he came with us, which meant a tour of a science block conducted at a crouch while he looked for a dinosaur. He found a plastic skeleton in the biology lab and asked if it was a T. rex. It was a human, and he was disappointed.
The one up the road
About fifteen minutes' walk from our door and a Year 7 intake of around 180. We walked it in the early evening light, which was a good idea, because I wanted to see the route as well as the school. The pupils showing us round were Year 9s who had put themselves forward, and they were funnier than the teachers. I asked the head of Year 7 how new children find their way around, and she said they don't, for about three weeks, so the timetable is built so that nobody is more than two minutes from anywhere on the first day, and every form has two Year 10 mentors.
That told us more than the glossy brochure. It sounded like a school that has seen a lot of eleven-year-olds get lost.
The big academy across the ring road
Much bigger, with an intake of about 300 and a sixth form, and a building that goes on for ever. Isla noticed the netball courts had new lines and the drama studio had a lighting rig, and she stood in front of it for a full minute. I noticed the queue. The dining hall at 6:30 on an open evening is not the dining hall at 12:30, but I asked the question I ask everywhere, which is where does a packed lunch go. The answer was honest: there's a separate area, but it's smaller than it should be and they're working on it. I liked the honesty, and I wrote "lunch area" in the notes anyway.
The ring road is the other thing. I walked the route with Isla on Sunday 20 September, and it took twenty-eight minutes at her speed, with one crossing at the lights. Rob did it in twenty-two.
The faith school two buses away
The smallest of the three, with an intake of about 150, and by some distance the quietest. It has a library with armchairs, which Isla noticed in the first thirty seconds, and a bus ride of fifty minutes door to door on a good morning, which I noticed on the way home. We aren't churchgoers, and Rob asked the head directly how places are given out. He explained that families who worship regularly come first, then siblings, then distance, and that there is a supplementary form to fill in. He was completely straightforward about the odds, and he said he would rather we put it down and be disappointed than not apply and wonder.
The question that told us most
Each school had one answer that told us more than the rest of the evening. At the one up the road it was the first-day timetable, in reply to my question. At the academy it was the admission that the packed-lunch area is too small, and at the faith school it was Rob's question about how places are given out. I had a list of eleven questions, about homework, phones and uniform costs, and the answers to most of those were fine and sounded much the same from one school to the next.
If I had to pick the school that was most honest with us, it would be the third. But a school can be honest and still be two buses from our house, and I've stopped pretending that doesn't matter.
I took a notebook, which I'd bought for 80p, and wrote a page for each school: what I saw, what I asked, what Isla said in the car. Rob's notes were one word per school. He wrote "friendly", "big" and "far", which turned out to be fairly accurate.
Isla's notes were different again. She had a list of nine things she'd liked and two she hadn't, and the two were both toilets. The list is on the fridge now, under the open evening letter. We have until 31 October and a form that I haven't opened yet. On Sunday, once the sort-out is done, I'm going to sit down with a cup of tea and the notebook and see what the pages say when they're all in one place.
