The four pillars of effective school interview preparation
By Walter Kerr
Co-founder, Oppidan Education
Authenticity is all that matters. If you love gardening, that should be your focus.
I meet families every week who feel the pressure to rehearse endlessly and to polish every answer to within an inch of its life. But the best school interviews are never the ones with pre-determined responses; they’re the ones where a child speaks freely, honestly and with a genuine sense of individuality.
Our job isn’t to script them, it’s to help them find their voice. With that in mind, here are four areas I believe make all the difference ahead of school interview season.
1. The law of diminishing return
In my experience, three to six hours of focused, high-quality interview preparation is more than enough. Beyond that, you start to see the law of diminishing return kick in. Children become overly conscious of what they think they should say rather than what they actually think. Their answers tighten up, their anxiety increases and they lose spontaneity.
There is certainly a place for long-term communication work: weekly coaching to build confidence, curiosity and conversational ease, but that’s different from drilling interview questions. When it comes to interview prep itself, less is very often more.
2. Strengths as personality traits (not being in the Bs for rugby)
When I ask children about their strengths, many immediately point to achievements: a sports team, a grade, a certificate. That’s great, but they don’t tell me anything about who the child really is and what their personality is like.
A far more impressive skill is the ability to articulate strengths as personality traits: kindness, resilience, honesty, creativity, leadership, empathy. If a child can say, “I’m someone who brings calm to a group when things get stressful,” I learn far more about them than if they tell me their rugby team.
Helping children make this shift away from external markers and towards internal qualities is one of the most valuable parts of interview preparation.
3. What’s your John le Carré?
The best interview I ever did was with a girl who had read the entire canon of John le Carré. Not because I’m obsessed with spy novels, but because she was. Her enthusiasm was infectious. We spent the whole interview discussing the character development, moral complexity and her favourite plot twists. We never touched the standard “What’s your favourite subject?” questions. We didn’t need to.
Every child has the potential for a “John le Carré moment” – an area of genuine passion that elevates them beyond rehearsed answers. It doesn’t matter what it is: dinosaurs, war poetry, coding, Greek myths, architecture, manga. If they have passion, they have presence.
4. The two-sentence book summary
At some stage, almost every interview involves a book. Not a list of books; just one. The child who can summarise their chosen book in two clear sentences immediately stands out.
This skill may seem minor, but it tells me a huge amount – can the child prioritise key information? Can they structure their thoughts? Can they speak concisely?
I’d encourage parents to practise this regularly. Start with something familiar like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, then move to whatever they’re reading now. The goal isn’t a perfect synopsis; it’s clarity. Registrars don’t want a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, they want to see that a child can think.