Open Days Decoded: Questions to Ask at Every Independent School Visit

What to look for, what to ask teachers, pupils and heads, and how to tell a good fit from a good marketing brochure.

Choosing a school is one of the biggest decisions you will make for your daughter, and an open day is your best chance to look past the prospectus and see the real thing. Every school will show you its newest building and its brightest results. The harder, more useful question is whether your child will be happy, stretched and known here. The good news is that the answer is usually hiding in plain sight, if you know what to look for and what to ask.

Here is a practical guide to making the most of every visit, whether it is your first open morning or your fifth. Use it to compare schools fairly, and to tell the difference between a place that genuinely fits your family and one that simply has an excellent brochure.

Before you go: decide what matters to you

Open days are designed to impress, so it helps to arrive with your own checklist rather than absorbing theirs. Spend ten minutes as a family agreeing what you actually care about. Academic stretch? Pastoral care? Music, sport or drama? The journey each morning? A sense that your daughter will be encouraged to be, as we put it, 10% braver? Write down three or four priorities and carry them with you. When the tour dazzles, your list keeps you honest.

A quick tip: book onto a normal open morning rather than only a polished open evening if you can. Seeing a school mid-lesson, with pupils moving between classes and corridors in full swing, tells you far more than a carefully staged showcase.

What to look for as you walk around

Before you ask a single question, watch. The atmosphere of a school is remarkably hard to fake, and your instincts are usually right.

• The pupils, not just the pupil guides. Tour guides are sometimes chosen for their confidence. Look instead at the children who do not know you are watching. Are they relaxed, chatty, absorbed in what they are doing? Do they hold doors and make eye contact?
• Walls and displays. Is pupils’ work on the walls, or only trophies and awards? Recent, real, slightly messy work suggests a school that values the process, not just the prize.
• How adults speak to children. Listen to the tone between staff and pupils in passing. Warmth and easy humour are hard to script.
• The ordinary spaces. Anyone can polish a reception area. Look at the loos, the dining hall, the corridors and the library. The unglamorous corners tell you how the school treats day-to-day life.
• Happiness and busyness together. The best schools feel purposeful and joyful at once. If it feels either frantic or flat, trust that.

Questions to ask teachers

Teachers are your richest source of honest detail. Move them gently past the script with open questions about everyday life.

• How do you support a child who is struggling in your subject, and how do you stretch one who finds it easy?
• What does a typical lesson look like? How much is teacher-led, and how much is discussion or independent work?
• How do you give feedback, and how often do parents hear from you?
• What happens when a child gets something wrong in class? (The answer reveals whether the school sees mistakes as failures or as learning.)
• What do you most enjoy about teaching here? Why did you join, and why have you stayed?

Listen for: specific, personal answers. A teacher who lights up describing a particular project or pupil is telling you something a glossy mission statement never could.

Questions to ask pupils

Children are wonderfully truthful, and they have not rehearsed. These are often the most revealing conversations of the day.

• What do you like most about being here, and what would you change if you could?
• What did you do last week that you really enjoyed?
• Who do you go to if you are worried or having a hard day?
• Is it easy to make friends here? What happens if someone falls out with their group?
• What clubs or activities do you do? Did you have to be good at it to join?

Listen for: the “what would you change” answer in particular. A confident pupil who can name something honestly, and explain how the school responds, is a sign of a culture that listens.

Questions to ask the head

The head sets the tone for everything else. This is your chance to understand the school’s values, not just its results. Ask about the things a brochure cannot promise.

• What kind of young person do you hope a child becomes by the time they leave you?
• How do you look after wellbeing day to day, not just in a crisis?
• How do you handle the pressure of exams and results without losing sight of the whole child?
• What is your approach to behaviour, kindness and how pupils treat one another?
• How do you decide which children will thrive here, and which might be happier elsewhere?
• What are you working to improve at the moment?

Listen for: a head who talks as readily about character, curiosity and confidence as about grades. The strongest schools are clear that excellent results and a happy, well-rounded child are not a trade-off but the product of the same thing.

A good fit, or a good brochure?

By the end of the visit you will have a feeling. Here is how to tell whether it is genuine fit or simply good marketing.

• Specifics beat slogans. “We nurture every individual” is a slogan. “Your daughter would likely start in the smaller maths set with Mrs X, and there are three lunchtime clubs she could try this term” is a fit.
• They ask about your child. A school confident in its fit will be curious about your daughter, and honest if it might not be the right place. A school selling to you will talk mostly about itself.
• The results have context. Strong results matter, but ask how they are achieved. Are children stretched and supported, or simply drilled? Ask where leavers go and, just as tellingly, whether they seem happy when they get there.
• Wellbeing is structural, not decorative. Look for real systems, named pastoral staff, clear routes for a worried child, rather than the word “wellbeing” on a poster.
• Your daughter’s reaction counts most. If she is allowed to come, watch her. Children often sense within minutes whether they can picture themselves somewhere. That instinct is data.

One last thing

You will rarely find a school that ticks every single box, and that is fine. The aim is not perfection but fit: a place where your daughter will feel known, be encouraged to try things that scare her a little, and come home most days with something to talk about. Trust the evidence of your own eyes, ask the questions the brochure does not answer, and pay attention to how the school makes both of you feel.

At Channing, we would always rather you saw the real school than a staged version of it, which is why almost all our open mornings happen during a normal school day, with real lessons in full swing. We appreciate that it may not always be easy to get time off during the working day so we also offer an open evening for Senior School entry and one for Sixth Form. If you would like to come and ask us all of the above in person, you can find our upcoming open day dates and book a visit on our Open Days page. We would love to meet you.