Five Questions to Ask on a School Open Day
24th July 26
Open days are carefully choreographed. The school knows which rooms look their best, which teachers give the warmest welcome, and which pupils are most likely to make a good impression. None of this is deceptive. It reflects genuine pride in what the school offers.
But you are not there to be impressed by what the school wants you to see. You are there to find out what you need to know to make a good decision for your child. These five questions are designed to help you do exactly that.
1. What Happens When a Child Is Struggling?
This is the single most revealing question you can ask on a school visit, and most parents don’t think to ask it. Schools are practised at describing how they support high-attaining pupils. Fewer have a genuinely well-developed answer for what they do when a child finds things hard. Listen for specifics: who identifies the difficulty, how quickly, and what happens next? The quality of the answer will tell you a great deal about the school’s real values.
At Kensington Wade, we would tell you that our teachers know their pupils individually, that we assess regularly and adjust our approach quickly, and that parents are brought into the conversation early rather than late. We believe transparency about difficulty is part of genuine partnership with families.
2. How Are the Most Able Pupils Challenged?
What does extension look like in a typical lesson, rather than just in after-school clubs? Are the most able pupils given more of the same, or genuinely different and more demanding work? Ask to see an example of a Year 5 or 6 project. The standard of independent work at the top of the school is a good proxy for the ambition of the curriculum overall. Our Prep School page gives a detailed overview of how curriculum challenge is structured at Kensington Wade.
3. What Does a Typical Day Actually Look Like?
What you want to understand is the texture of daily life: how the timetable works, what transitions between lessons feel like, what children do at lunchtime, how much of the day is teacher-led versus pupil-led. Ask a teacher or pupil guide to walk you through a typical Tuesday. You will learn more from that than from any amount of aspirational language about breadth and balance.
4. How Do You Communicate With Parents?
Communication style is a surprisingly accurate indicator of school culture. Schools that communicate proactively, with context and honesty, rather than reactively and only when something has gone wrong, view parents as genuine partners. Ask specifically about how the school communicates progress throughout the year, not just at formal reporting points. Ask how easy it is to speak to a class teacher, and how quickly messages are typically responded to.
5. Where Do Your Leavers Go, and Why?
For a prep school, this question reveals whether the school takes a thoughtful, individualised approach to senior school placement, or effectively channels pupils towards a small number of preferred schools regardless of fit. A good answer describes the range of schools pupils go to, acknowledges that the right senior school depends on the child, and gives a sense of how the school prepares pupils for interviews and entrance assessments.
At Kensington Wade, our leavers go to a wide range of competitive senior schools. We prepare them not just academically but in terms of the confidence, cultural awareness and self-possession that make those processes go well.
One More Thing: Bring Your Child
If at all possible, bring your child to the open day, or arrange a separate taster visit. Children respond to environments in ways that are immediate and honest. Watch whether your child leans in or draws back, and whether they talk about it on the way home. Their instincts are worth listening to.
We offer individual family visits and taster sessions at Kensington Wade so prospective families can see the school in a relaxed, personalised way. Book a place or get in touch on our Visit the School page.
