Forty children in Years 6 and 7 undertook practice interview sessions with four fabulous mentors from Oppidan Education on Tuesday 10th October.

The day started with the acting out of three different ‘snapshots’ of interviews. From this, the children extracted what went well in each scenario and what could have been improved upon. Individual interviews followed, with questions designed to assess all areas of a child’s characteristics: engagement; curiosity; confidence; self-reflection; individuality; creativity; reasoning; and ownership.

Following this was a section involving the analysis of either a poem, a piece of art or a picture. For example, the children may have been shown a picture of a polar bear in an urban location and asked to talk about it. After this was a section of thinking questions, such as ‘The year is 2050, what do you think the world looks like?’ and ‘If you steal a million pounds, does this make you a millionaire?'. 

Miss Kerby, Head of Lower School, thoroughly enjoyed being a fly on the wall for the interviews – some fascinating, thought-provoking answers and justifications were overheard! The session was then rounded off by the Oppidan mentor providing each child with feedback about their answers and top tips on how to improve - even further - in the future.