Five Open Evenings, Ranked by Cake

Mine had a column for results, a column for the journey and a column I never labelled but which was, essentially, “hall”. Alfie’s had one column. It was food.

School one had a hammer-beam roof. I stood under it and said, out loud, that it was like something out of Hogwarts. Alfie, ten, looked up for one second and pointed out that we already had National Trust membership, so if I wanted to look at halls I could do it at weekends without having to do maths in one. Score: Mum 8, Alfie 2 (warm squash).

School two had cupcakes with the school crest piped on in blue icing. Alfie had one in the foyer, one in the science block and one “for the car”. In the car he said it was his favourite. I asked why. He said, as if to a slow colleague, “The cupcakes.” I said you do not choose a school because of cake. He asked what you do choose it because of, and the word “hall” got most of the way out before I shut my mouth. Score: Mum 5, Alfie 10.

This is not an unusual child. Read the parent forums in any October and you will find that a cupcake at an open day has decided more secondary transfers than any league table, and that a child walked past an acre of playing fields will ask where the biscuits are.

School three’s head spoke about values for thirty-five minutes. Alfie read the fire-evacuation notice twice and asked, in a whisper the head could hear, what a muster point was. School four had a sixth-form coffee bar, which he took as a personal insult, being ten.

By Priory Pembroke I had given up on columns. A Year 8 boy in a lanyard met us at the door with a laminated map he plainly did not need, and did something no adult had done all month. He asked Alfie what he wanted to see.

Alfie, startled at being consulted, said PE. Then art. Then he stopped dead in a corridor, sniffed like a pointer and said, “What’s that?” Bread, said our guide. Year 9. It’s on the way if we go the other way round. We went the other way round.

He had volunteered to show families round, he told me, because when he was in Year 6 the pupil who showed him round had been easier to ask things than the adults. He was right. Alfie asked him eleven questions, ten of them about whether you are allowed to use the oven yourself. He asked me none.

We passed the hall. I would like to report on it. I can’t. I didn’t look either.

In the car I asked for the verdict and braced for bread. “That one,” he said. Why? “He didn’t make us look at the hall.” A mile later: “And nobody said Hogwarts.”

We have kept the National Trust membership. He was right about that too.