The 6 questions you should ask on a school tour

You’ve clicked through the website, requested a hard copy of the prospectus to be mailed out to you, and booked yourself into the school tour happening next week. You show up to find at least a dozen other parents milling around, including at least one who is pregnant and another with a pram. You’re warmly greeted by a member of staff and you all walk leisurely around the grounds, stopping intermittently to admire this or that building, and maybe even see a class in action.

Whilst a school tour is a useful research activity, it’s also a marketing exercise. All too often, parents focus on asking questions about the facilities and the extracurricular activities – things that can be gleaned without ever setting foot on the school grounds.  But there are some questions you can ask to give you greater insight into how each particular school might cater to your child and create the kind of environment more conducive to kindness, empathy and other soft skills that are so important in today’s world.

Can you please point me in the direction of reception?

Sometimes you can get a feel for a place with the smallest details. If someone – a staff member or student – is happy to escort you to where you need to go, greets you in a cheery way, and seems generally warm and welcoming, it’s always a nice feeling. To be fair, the person you ask may not be able to take you to reception (in case they’re on their way to class and don’t want to be late, or are watching a group of students and can’t leave them unattended, for instance). But the extent of their helpfulness can sometimes be a good litmus test for the kind of atmosphere in the school.

Testing is really important to me – how much and how often do you do it?

If you’re reading this blog, chances are, you don’t care a whole lot about testing. Especially not the standardised kind that’s easy to game and doesn’t necessarily measure the most important things. Sure, tests may focus on literacy, numeracy, and general knowledge. And of course, these are important. But they’re not the only essential elements of education and they’re most definitely not the most significant ones. Testing also only gives a snapshot of one part of one day in what should be an interesting, enjoyable and rich school life. If a school focuses a lot of time on teaching to the test then students might get good at doing these drills but they may easily lose interest in learning. Learning how to get good at tests doesn’t mean that creativity, innovation, and critical and divergent thinking are being nurtured. In fact, it’s likely it could be quite the opposite.

How receptive are the students – and their parents – to trying new learning strategies? 

As a teacher, sometimes I’ve arrived in class excited to try a new strategy that I’ve learnt and for the most part, students are receptive and eager to try it too. But I’ve had my fair share of times when students have just wanted to sit passively and be told what they need to know. I’ve also been told at parent-teacher interviews by one parent that they didn’t want their child engaged in group work (a mandatory requirement in the syllabus) because there was no way their child could possibly have anything to learn from the other students in the group. True story. It can be hard being a student (or the parent of a student) these days, with so many demands on your time. But it can also be fun and amazing. Letting a teacher use different strategies exposes children to different ways of thinking and can only be good for their metacognitive skills. They’ll learn that there are a number of different ways to solve a problem, rather than just one.

How much involvement do you expect that parents have in their child’s learning? 

There are some parents who are hypervigilant and super involved in every aspect of their child’s school and learning. There are others who barely have any time at all between the demands of work, home, and life in general. Every family is going to have a different approach based on their capacity, interest and so many other constraints. This question is more to gauge whether the school has faith in the professionalism and skills of their staff. A test of a good school is one that isn’t going to pander to demanding parents. It should be just about the kids and the teachers. A good school has also invested a lot of time and effort in hiring, professionally developing and retaining the best staff so they trust that they are doing the right job.

How invested is the school in its teachers’ professional learning?

You want your child to be a lifelong learner. And to become one, they need to be exposed to this attitude every single day, both at home and at school. Being immersed in an environment where they are taught and mentored by others who are passionate about learning and love it for the pure joy it brings … well, that’s a gift that will keep on giving. A school that cares about this is also going to invest heavily in the professional learning of its staff. Not all schools have the budget to send every staff member on as many in-services or training courses that they’d like to attend. But fostering a culture that encourages and supports further learning for staff – whether that’s through postgraduate study or short courses – means that teachers and admin staff are continuously reinvigorating their knowledge base and learning new skills, which then has a direct and immediate impact on their students.

How many teachers on staff also send their children here? 

Beginning your question with ‘how many’ presumes – more often than not, correctly – that you are going to get a positive answer to your question. And admittedly, this is a tricky question because teachers with children have many different reasons why they do or don’t choose to send them to the school where they work. But this question is kind of like asking a doctor: what would you do about this if it were your son/daughter? Teachers at a school can give great insights into a school’s culture and approach because they are right there at the chalk face, engaging with students and also negotiating the other more administrative side of schooling. Choosing to send their own children to the school where they work can sometimes – but not always – be an endorsement. But take this one with a grain of salt. A teacher might choose for their children to attend the same school they teach in because it’s more convenient, because the school offers tuition fee discounts for staff, or any number of other reasons.

What are some other great questions you’ve asked on a tour that have helped you better understand a school and its culture?

p/c: kyo azuma