Playbook, private school
A parent wants to come and look round. Which visit do they mean?
Look round covers a Saturday open morning with a hall full of families, a private tour on a working weekday with the registrar, and a taster day where a child sits in lessons with a year group. They are arranged differently, they are open to different people, and an assistant that treats them as one visit sends somebody to the wrong one.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for appointment booking holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- An open morning is a dated event with a capacity, so it is reserved in advance and it closes, which makes the useful answer the next date and the reservation route rather than a general welcome.
- A private tour happens while the school is teaching, so it is fitted around the registrar's week and around what the family wants to see, and it is the visit for a parent who cannot make a Saturday or who is moving into the area mid year.
- A taster day puts a child into lessons with a year group for a day, which is why it usually follows registration rather than preceding it, and it carries a lunch, a clothing question and a supervision arrangement that an open morning does not.
- The person asking is a parent and the person attending may be a child, so a request to bring a younger sibling, or to come in while pupils are in the building, is a safeguarding matter as much as a diary one.
How it arrives
- when is the next open morning
- can we come and look round on a normal school day
- do i have to book for the open morning or can we turn up
- can my son spend a day in year 7 before we decide
- who do i speak to about arranging a tour
- we are moving to the area in january can we still visit
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Open morning dates for the year, with the reservation route | Each date, which part of the school it covers, and how a family reserves a place. A page saying open mornings are held each term without giving dates is the version that generates the enquiry you were trying to absorb. |
|---|---|
| What a private tour is and who arranges it | That it happens on a teaching day, roughly how long it takes, who leads it, and the address or form that starts it. Name the registrar by the title your school actually uses, because a handover is only useful when it names a destination. |
| The taster day conditions | Which year groups it is offered for, whether the child has to be registered first, what they wear, what they bring and who supervises them. This is the visit parents ask about most nervously and the one schools describe least. |
| What each visit is not | Whether anything on the day forms part of the entrance assessment. State it for all three, because a parent who suspects a Saturday morning is being marked will prepare a child for it. |
The reply
There are three ways to come in and they work differently. Open mornings are dated and have to be reserved in advance, and the next dates are on our admissions page [1]. If a Saturday does not suit, the registrar arranges private tours on ordinary teaching days [2]. A taster day, where a child joins a year group for the day, comes after registration rather than before it [3]. I cannot see a diary or reserve anything, so tell me your name, an email and which visit you mean, and it goes to the registrar.
It sorts the three visits into the order a family moves through them, so a parent who cannot make a Saturday is not left thinking the school is shut to them. Putting the taster day after registration heads off the request that wastes the registrar's first reply. And the diary is declared out of reach before the handover is offered rather than after it.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor names a date, asks to be put down for an open morning, asks for a tour, or raises anything that involves a child coming into the building.
I cannot reserve a place or arrange a visit. Leave me your name, an email and which visit you have in mind, and the registrar will come back to you with dates.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a place at an open morning has been reserved, because nothing here writes to a list and the family will arrive expecting to be expected.
- Never confirm that a particular child is registered, booked on a taster day or expected on a date, whoever appears to be asking.
- Never suggest a visit helps an application, since that implies the day is being marked when your own material says it is not.
- Never offer a date for a tour, because the registrar arranges those around a teaching week that is not visible from here.
Questions
- Could it reserve an open morning place if we connected our form?
- No. It reads the documents you give it and cannot write into any system, so the reservation still happens on your form. What it does is get a family to the right form for the right visit, which is where most of these enquiries go wrong.
- Parents ask to bring a child on a weekday tour. What should it say?
- That the arrangement is the registrar's to make, and nothing more. A child on site during a teaching day involves supervision and signing in, and those are decisions a person makes rather than facts to be quoted.
- Is it worth publishing dates that fill up?
- Publish the dates and the fact that they fill, and the assistant will say both. A family told a date is full asks for the next one. A family told nothing assumes the school never replied.
Keep reading
- Everything for a private schoolAdmissions timelines, fees, bursaries and uniform lists are safe ground for a school assistant. Anything about a named pupil or applicant is not.
- Handling appointment booking in generalIt cannot write into a calendar. The job is removing every reason not to book, then handing over with the details already gathered.
- The termly figure, the annual figure, and the gap between themFees are published per term by year group. The compulsory charges sit outside them, and the registration fee is not a fee at all.
- Distance is an admissions question before it is a logistics oneThe route and its pick up points decide whether a family applies at all. The two gates, the barrier and signing in come after.
- Are you open is four different questions on a school siteThe junior day and the senior day end at different times, and a question asked in August is about the office rather than the school.
Try it on your own material
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