You have been given forty-five minutes. There is a tour, a presentation, probably some refreshments, and a member of the admissions team who is warm, enthusiastic, and very good at their job.
By the time you leave, you will have seen the swimming pool, the robotics lab, and the performing arts centre. You will have been shown last year’s exam results on a slide. You will have heard the word “holistic” at least four times.
What you may not have found out is whether this school is actually right for your child.
Open days are marketing events. That is not a criticism, schools need to attract families, and a well-run open day is a legitimate part of that. But the format tends to favour impressive facilities and headline statistics over the things that genuinely determine whether a child thrives. The questions that matter most are rarely the ones the tour naturally leads to.
This guide gives you the twelve questions that cut through the glossy presentation and get to what you actually need to know. Take it with you. Use it. The school that answers these questions well, honestly, specifically, without deflecting is almost certainly a school worth considering.
Before You Visit: How to Research Schools in Dubai
The most useful thing you can do before any school open day is spend ten minutes on the KHDA website reading the school’s most recent inspection report. It is free, it is public, and it tells you more about a school than any open day presentation will.
Look specifically at the ratings for teaching quality, student outcomes, and wellbeing. Note where the school scored lower and ask about those areas directly. A school that acknowledges its areas for improvement and can speak specifically about what they are doing about them is a school with genuine self-awareness. A school that deflects or becomes defensive is telling you something important too.
With that done, here are the twelve questions.
School Open Day Checklist: 12 Questions Every Parent Should Ask
1. "What does a typical Tuesday look like for a child in Year 4 or whichever year group your child will be joining?"
Not the highlights. Not the annual Shakespeare production or the robotics competition. Tuesday. The ordinary day.
How a school answers this question tells you everything about how the curriculum actually lives in the classroom. You want to hear about the rhythm of the day, the balance between subjects, how much time children spend moving versus sitting, how transitions are handled, whether there is genuine time for creative or independent work. A school that can describe Tuesday fluently is a school where teachers are thinking about the whole child’s daily experience, not just the big set pieces.
If the answer is vague, generic, or pivots immediately to the extraordinary, ask again. You are going to send your child there on Tuesdays.
2. "How do you identify when a child is struggling, academically or emotionally and what happens next?"
This is the question most parents do not think to ask until they need the answer. By then, it is too late to find out.
You want to know whether there is a formal system for tracking progress and wellbeing, or whether it relies on individual teachers noticing. You want to know what the referral pathway looks like, who gets involved, how quickly, and what support is actually available. You want to know whether pastoral care is a dedicated role or something teachers do in addition to everything else.
The best schools have clear, multi-layered systems. They catch things early. They communicate with parents quickly and honestly, not defensively. They have learning support staff who are genuinely integrated into the school, not an afterthought in a corner of the building.
A school that answers this question with confidence and specificity is a school that has thought about what happens when things are not going well. That matters more than the swimming pool.
3. "What is your teacher turnover rate, and how long has the current leadership team been in place?"
This question makes some admissions teams uncomfortable. Ask it anyway.
Teacher stability is one of the most reliable indicators of school quality that parents almost never ask about. A school where teachers stay is a school where teachers are supported, respected, and professionally satisfied. A school with high turnover means your child may have a different teacher every year, relationships do not develop, and institutional knowledge constantly walks out the door.
Leadership stability matters for a similar reason. A school that has had three principals in four years is a school in some form of difficulty, regardless of what the tour looked like.
You do not need an exact number. What you are listening for is whether they answer the question directly, or whether they change the subject.
4. "Can I speak to a parent whose child has been here for at least three years?"
Not a testimonial video. Not a quote on a brochure. A real parent, on the phone or in person, who has been through enough of the school experience to have an informed view.
Good schools say yes to this without hesitation. They have parents who are genuinely happy and who are willing to talk about it. If the answer is that they cannot arrange this, or that they will try and then nothing happens, that is information.
When you do speak to a parent, ask them what surprised them about the school, both positively and negatively. What would they do differently if they were choosing again? What do they wish they had known before enrolling? Real parents give real answers. They are the most useful research you can do.
5. "How does the school communicate with parents and what can we expect when something goes wrong?"
Communication is the thing parents complain about most in schools, and the thing schools most underestimate the importance of. Ask specifically.
How are day-to-day updates shared? What is the expected response time if a parent sends a message to a teacher? How are concerns escalated if a parent feels they are not being heard? What happened the last time something went seriously wrong, how did the school communicate about it?
That last question is the important one. Every school has had something go wrong. A bullying incident, a safeguarding concern, a teacher who turned out not to be right for the role. How a school handles that communication tells you far more about its culture than how it handles the easy days.
6. "How do you stretch children who are ahead, and how do you support children who are behind, at the same time, in the same classroom?"
This is the question that separates good teaching from great teaching.
Every school claims to differentiate. What you want to know is how. Not the philosophy, the practice. What does a teacher actually do when one child in a class of twenty-two has finished the work and another child has not started it yet? What resources and training do teachers have for this? Is there additional support for children with specific learning differences, and how is that provision funded?
If the answer is that every child is treated as an individual, push for specifics. Individually how? The schools that can answer this question concretely are the schools where every child, not just the average child actually gets an education.
7. "What does your behaviour policy actually look like on a day-to-day basis?"
Most schools have a written behaviour policy. What you want to understand is the culture behind it.
Is discipline primarily punitive or restorative? When a child behaves badly, is the first response a consequence or a conversation? How are persistent behavioural difficulties handled, and at what point are parents involved? What is the school’s approach to conflict between students?
The answers reveal the values of the school more directly than almost anything else. A school that responds to difficulty with curiosity, what is going on for this child, what they need is a school that sees children as people, not problems to manage. That is the kind of school most parents want, even if they have not put it in those words.
8. "What percentage of your teachers are subject specialists, and what are the qualifications of the early years staff specifically?"
In a primary school, this matters enormously. Young children learn best from teachers who understand early childhood development, not just teachers who are enthusiastic.
Ask about qualifications. Ask how many teaching assistants are in each classroom and what their training is. In a secondary school, ask about the proportion of teachers who are teaching their specialist subject, a History teacher who is trained in History teaches differently, and usually better, than one who is covering it because the timetable demands it.
This is not a gotcha question. It is a quality question. Good schools are proud of their staff qualifications and talk about them readily.
9. "How are you preparing students for the world they will actually graduate into, not the world of ten years ago?"
This question is particularly important in Dubai, where the national conversation about AI, future skills, and economic transformation is genuinely serious and not just rhetoric.
You want to hear about computational thinking, creative problem-solving, collaboration, and communication, not just academic results. You want to know whether the school is thinking about what a child needs to thrive in 2035, or whether it is optimising for 2005. You want to know how technology is integrated into learning, not just present in the building.
The schools that answer this question well are the ones whose educators are genuinely engaged with the future. The ones that answer with exam results and university admissions statistics are telling you something about their priorities.
10. "What is the school's approach to screen time, social media, and digital wellbeing?"
In Dubai specifically, this question has real urgency. Parents across the UAE are actively grappling with the impact of technology on children’s attention, mental health, and social development and schools vary enormously in how seriously they take it.
Ask whether there is a clear policy on phones during the school day. Ask how the school teaches digital citizenship and media literacy, not just internet safety in Year 3, but an ongoing, age-appropriate conversation about how to live thoughtfully in a digital world. Ask whether teachers are trained in the relationship between screen use and wellbeing.
A school that has thought carefully about this has understood something important about the children in front of them. A school that has not is behind.
11. "What does inclusion look like here for a child who learns differently, moves through content faster, or needs more time?"
The word inclusion is used constantly in Dubai schools. What it means in practice varies enormously.
Ask whether the school has dedicated learning support staff and what their qualifications are. Ask how children with identified learning differences are supported, in the classroom, not just in separate sessions. Ask what happens if a child is formally assessed and found to have a specific need mid-year.
Ask the same questions from the other end: what happens to a child who is significantly ahead? Is there genuine enrichment available, or is being ahead just rewarded with more of the same work?
Every child will, at some point, need something the standard programme does not automatically provide. The school’s answer to this question determines whether that moment becomes a crisis or a conversation.
12. "If my child is unhappy here in six months, what would you want me to do?"
Save this one for last. It is the question that catches schools off guard and the quality of the answer is one of the most revealing things you will hear all day.
What you are listening for is an invitation. A good school will tell you to come straight to them, early, before things have built up. They will describe a specific person to contact and a clear process for having that conversation. They will say that they would rather hear from you at week three than week thirteen. They will mean it.
A school that is confident in its own pastoral care, its communication, and its relationship with families does not fear this question. It welcomes it. Because the schools that handle difficulty well are not the ones where nothing goes wrong. They are the ones where parents feel able to say so when it does.
How to Evaluate a School’s Answers During an Open Day
Write them down. Literally, bring a notebook. The admissions team will not mind, it signals that you are serious, and serious families are exactly who good schools want.
After each visit, compare not just what was said but how it was said. Was the admissions team defensive or open? Did they give specific answers or elegant generalities? Did they talk about children as individuals or as cohorts?
The school that answers these twelve questions well, directly, specifically, and without performing is the school where your child is most likely to be genuinely seen. In Dubai’s crowded and competitive school market, that is rarer than the robotics lab suggests.
