Makes you wonder....

jdwarwick · Post by **jdwarwick** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 5:42 pm

Just a couple of things that occurred to me today.
1. Should you judge a school by how you are treated by the reception staff? I have had a very bad experience at one school and a great one at another.
2. As we were at a school today - I was looking around at all the other visitors during coffee and wondering if anyone from the forum was there. It's really funny, don't you think, that we could have been chatting in real life?

Anyway decisions are made now and am glad it's over, until March that is.

paulap · Post by **paulap** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 5:51 pm

I know what you mean about Reception staff - it took me three attempts to finally book for my DS to have a look round SJWMS during the day. I was told that I didn't need to see it during the day if we'd been to the evening presentation. Another call resulted in being told that they didn't show people round during the day any more and luckily on the third attempt, after saying that I wouldn't contemplate sending my DS to the school until I'd seen it "in action", they finally agreed we could visit.

medwaymum · Post by **medwaymum** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 8:13 pm

I had a similar experience with the Math school.

paulap · Post by **paulap** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 8:19 pm

medwaymum wrote:I had a similar experience with the Math school.

Quite a few of us did - wonder why they are being so obstructive?

familyinthevalley · Post by **familyinthevalley** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 10:38 pm

I think I would definitely be influenced by the response I got from reception at a school. After all, if you 'take your business' anywhere, you always judge whether you will trust their customer service, follow up etc. by the 'service' you receive in the first instance. Well, we are entrusting our children to these schools, to provide for them what we hope will be a fulfilling and educational 7 years. They are receiving government funds to provide this. When we all talk about 'go with the school you best feel suits your child'....I think the feeling we get is forming when we speak with that receptionist!

superMonkey · Post by **superMonkey** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 11:15 pm

Hi there.
Just wanted to put the other side of things across...

I have 2 boys at The Math (year 7 and year 8 .) and I just thought I would defend their choice of not accepting visits during the day.

Lessons can be severely disrupted by a stream of visitors looking through the doors / coming into the classrooms. Each disruption interrupts the 'flow' of the lesson for the teacher and unsettles the pupils who then have to settle again only to be disrupted again by the next family and so on...

As for the receptionists - I think it is a bit unfair to judge a whole school by one person, that person could just be filling in while the usual staff member has left the office for a bit.

Just my opinion, by the way.

By the way, I can highly reccommend the school - the boys are really happy there

Monkey

medwaymum · Post by **medwaymum** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:37 am

Hi supermonkey, I do agree with you. I think the problem lies, however, for a lot of Kent people who had to have their CAF form in on the 6th but only had an option of an open evening not day at the Math school. I personally wouldn't put any school on my list without viewing it during the working day.
Unfortunately its a case of the two Councils, Medway and Kent, having different deadlines. The Math school open evenings, and days, were fine for Medway families. Living on the border of Medway and Kent posed a real problem for us as a lot of Medway schools had open days AFTER our CAF form was due in.
Happy to say now that form is now in and decisions happily made. Just got to wait til March 1st for the all-important decisions!

MasterChief · Post by **MasterChief** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 12:51 pm

Not in Medway but...
My OH was put off visiting an Academy to the south of town when 'phoning to confirm the opening hours and being told that they were the same as on the website,except the details given by the receptionist were entirely different from those on the website and imparted in a distinctly frosty tone
Suffice to say, we didn't feel it necessary to visit!

superMonkey · Post by **superMonkey** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:11 pm

MasterChief (great name btw - fan of halo by any chance?

)
Are you saying that you didn't visit a potential school because of the receptionist's manner/knowledge?

This could have been the perfect school for your child and you judged it on one person who won't even have anything to do with your child's education if they were to go there. Maybe they were having a bad day (PMS /their rabbit just died / just one of those days) or maybe they weren't the usual receptionist or maybe even they are a particularly rude person. Whatever reason, the whole school should not be judged on this one person.
Yes, we should expect perfect manners and knowledge from reception staff, but in reality, for whatever reason, this is not always possible.
If a receptionist's manner dictated where I visited, I would certainly never visit my GP

Monkey

MasterChief · Post by **MasterChief** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:29 pm

Hi superMonkey (cool name too and yes I'm a Halo geek!)

To be honest the school was below the bottom of our list anyway( it is ~ 3miles away) as we are kind of spoilt for choice in Maidstone, but it was the receptionists denial that what was written on the website homepage was actually written, inspite of the fact that my OH had the page open infront of her,and the fact that she was downright rude and unhelpful.
Admittedly our opinion of the school was not enhanced by the fact that when I went to collect my copy of Halo ODST at midnight on a school night from the shop (told you I was a Geek) there were a number of year 8 boys in this schools uniform in the queue!