What Happens at a School Visit or Open Day, and the Questions Worth Asking

A school visit is usually a tour of classrooms and facilities, a conversation with the headteacher or senior staff, and the chance to ask anything, typically in 45 minutes to an hour. An open day is the group version, with talks and displays. Both exist for one purpose: letting you test the school's claims against what you can see. Here's how to use them well.

An open day is a set-piece event: the school on its showpiece day, with presentations, pupil guides and other families around you. It's efficient for a first look and for hearing the school describe itself.

An individual visit shows you a normal working day. You see lessons as they actually run, corridors as they actually sound, and you get sustained one-to-one time to ask your real questions, including ones you might not raise in a room full of strangers: about money, faith, or your child's specific needs.

If you're seriously considering a school, do the individual visit even if you've attended an open day. At Daffodil, visits are individual, bookable in defined slots, and hosted by the headteacher, so you spend the time with the person who runs the school, not a marketing hand-off. Book a visit. When a future open day is scheduled, it's listed too: see open days.

What a typical visit looks like

Expect some version of this shape:

1. Welcome and a short conversation: who your child is, what you're looking for, where they are now.
2. The tour: classrooms (ideally mid-lesson), hall, library, outdoor space, and anything the school considers distinctive; here, that includes the on-premise mosque where the whole school prays in congregation.
3. Sitting down properly: admissions process, fees, the school day, and your questions.
4. Next steps: what applying looks like, and when you'd hear back.

Bring your child if the school welcomes it: how staff speak to your child, rather than about them, is some of the strongest evidence you'll get.

What to look for (beyond the paint)

Buildings are the least of it. Watch for:

• How children behave when they think no one's watching: corridors and stairwells tell you more than assemblies.
• How adults and children speak to each other: warmth with boundaries is the thing you're listening for.
• Whether displays show real, recent work: dated, current, imperfect children's work beats laminated perfection.
• Whether lessons are actually happening: engaged children mid-task, not a suspicious number of videos.
• How the head talks about weaknesses: every school has them; you're testing for honesty, not perfection.

The questions worth asking

Teaching and progress

• What's the maximum class size (the cap, not the average)?
• How will I know how my child is doing? How often are assessments, and how often do we meet? (Push past "an open-door policy" to actual frequency.)
• What happens when a child falls behind, and who notices?

The day and the ethos

• What does a normal Tuesday look like, hour by hour?
• For an Islamic school: is Qur'an and Islamic learning timetabled in the school day, or is a separate evening madrasah still assumed? How is salah managed? What happens in Ramadan?
• What wraparound care exists before and after school, and in holidays?

The practical

• What are the full fees including VAT, and what's not included? (A school that publishes its fees has already answered this. Our fees.)
• How does the admissions assessment work, and what is it for?
• What's the school's inspection history? Any good school will answer this directly and point you to its reports; ours are set out openly. Our inspections.

The one question that tells you most

• "What kind of child does badly here?" An honest, thoughtful answer to this is one of the strongest signs of a school that knows itself.

After the visit

Write your impressions down the same day. After two or three visits, schools blur. Compare what you saw against what each school claimed, and notice any gap. And test the follow-up: how quickly and how helpfully a school responds afterwards is a preview of life as a parent there. (For what it's worth, we reply to every enquiry within 24 hours.)

Frequently asked questions