Standing in a busy school hall, prospectus in hand, most parents realise the same thing at once: the polished displays and confident tour guides tell you plenty, but not always the things you actually need to know. An open day is a rare chance to look past the marketing and understand how a sixth form really works day to day. The trick is knowing which questions to ask, and when to trust the answers you get in the corridor over the ones printed in the brochure.
The temptation is to focus on results. Grades matter, of course, but a strong pass rate on its own says little about whether a particular teenager will thrive there. A better opening question is a simple one: how do you support students who find a subject difficult partway through the course? The reply reveals a great deal. Schools that talk openly about intervention, revision support and pastoral check-ins are usually the ones doing it well. Vague reassurance tends to mean less structure behind the scenes.
Subject choice is where families often feel most in the dark. It helps to ask how flexible the timetable really is, whether unusual combinations are possible, and what happens if a student wants to switch a course after a few weeks. A genuinely supportive sixth form treats those early weeks as a settling-in period rather than a fixed commitment. Ask, too, about class sizes for the subjects your child cares about most, since an average figure across the whole school can hide a lot of variation.
It is worth turning the conversation towards the students themselves. Current sixth formers are usually the most candid people in the building, and a quiet question away from the official tour, about what they would change if they could, often tells you more than any presentation. Notice whether they seem relaxed, whether they know their teachers by name, and whether they talk about the place as somewhere they belong rather than somewhere they simply attend.
Beyond the classroom, the practical questions matter more than they first appear. How is study time structured for students with free periods? What does the school actually do to prepare young people for university applications, apprenticeships or work? Families weighing up options such as a small sixth form college in Cambridge with a focus on individual attention often find that the level of one-to-one guidance is the deciding factor, far more than any single facility on the tour. St Andrews Cambridge is one example of a setting built around that kind of close support, and it is easy to see how the model appeals to students who have felt lost in a larger crowd.
Perhaps the most useful thing to do on an open day is to stop talking and pay attention. Watch how staff speak to students when they think no one is listening. Notice whether the building feels calm or chaotic, whether the library is used and whether there is somewhere quiet to work. A young person’s willingness to spend two years somewhere often comes down to a feeling rather than a fact, and that feeling is worth taking seriously.
Before leaving, it helps to ask one final, forward-looking question: what happens to students after they finish here? Not just the destinations, but the sense that the school stays interested in its leavers. A sixth form confident in its own approach will happily tell you where its young people go and, more tellingly, why.
An open day cannot answer everything, but with the right questions it stops being a performance and becomes a conversation. For families beginning that search, exploring options online first is a sensible starting point: https://standrewscambridge.co.uk offers a useful sense of what a smaller, more personal sixth form can look like before you ever set foot through the door.
*This article was contributed by the team at St Andrews Tutorial Services Limited, an independent sixth form and tutorial college based in Cambridge. St Andrews Cambridge specialises in small class sizes, individual academic guidance and tailored support for students preparing for A Levels, GCSEs and university entrance.*
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