I assume that the question regarding the alumni is to assess the networking potential of the school. Which, depending on the choice of career, maybe be quite an important choice. (I assume going to Eton may open many doors... and close some too)

The school open evenings are normally staged. One thing is for sure though, irrespective of all , it is ur kid who has to perform and set the standards. If the kid is not performing , then the best school and environment is all smoke and mirrors and it is all gonna end in tears.
Personally I think it might boil down to not what schools u like but what schools u get.

I asked some of these questions last night at an open day and got some honest and frank answers, because they weren't expecting questions about bad behaviour etc, refreshingly I got the same answers after asking the same question to a few. Asked one student about the food, her response 'forget it, bring packed lunch' made me lol, in the next breathe she said was joking

This is more a question NOT to ask.... Overheard on a school tour today....

Parent A: have you looked at any other schools around here?

Parent B: yes, we're thinking of School A and school B because we live in <this place>

Parent A: have you thought about <grammar C>, it's quite near you?

Parent B: oh, we don't want *that* grammar, it's gone terribly downhill recently and they have an awful Ofsted.....

Parent A goes silent... guess where their older child goes....

Tour of lower school site, hitherto visited not very local comp given to DD as a Non Ranked Allocation (otherwise known as Nearest Undersubscribed School), accompanied by two other DC obviously in the same situation, i.e. they had failed the 11+. But unlike DD, their parents had paid school fees for years for them to end up where we all were.

Mummy A: obsessed with whether every corner of the school and all the bits between were covered by the cctv, whether every single camera was working and whether they were all monitored every single moment of every single day.

Mummy B: disappointed that not getting a tour of the upper school site - a mile away - as well, because all she knew about the upper school was the violence and the drug taking.

Daddy B: What about the shooting? He knew all about the shooting, courtesy of his uncle, who had been working as a contractor at the chool at the time of the shooting.

Needless to say, in reality, where the cctv did or didn't reach and when it was or wasn't monitored wasn't an issue. The violence amounted to no more than average low-level disruption and guess what? The shooting never happened. Fortunately, though, families A and B chose to carry on in their beliefs, as DD reported that neither boy turned up in September. I don't know whether Mummy B ever found an alternative drug dealer

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