Which do you think is actually more effective for getting prospective students in?
What does your school do…?
I believe that an Open Evening is one part in a larger jigsaw. I think it is extremely important for students and families to be able to come and obtain a flavour / overview experience of their future sixth form and meet current students and teachers. First impressions count!
I also think that Open Days allow the opportunity for a student to come an experience a mock day which provides more indepth insight.
Our school delivers both!
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I agree with Chloe. Some schools, certainly for year 7, will hold an open evening and then offer tours or open mornings for parents to book on to for a more in depth look around the school along with their child.
I don’t think there is a right or wrong way. Much of what you do will depend on what you are physically able to offer as a school as well as your local demographic.
I worked at both kinds of schools - one that had just the open evening, and one that had both an evening and a subsequent ‘open day’.
To be honest, I never really believed that the open day offered enough extra value to justify the work required to pull it off…
Yes, parents and children can wander around the corridors, but they usually weren’t allowed into the classrooms (and would instead just peer through an open door and see that lessons were indeed going on), but other than seeing that our students weren’t stark-raving mad, I’m not sure how much extra information they would have picked up that they didn’t get during the earlier open evening?
What do other people think about their open days?