How to Choose the Right Public School for Your Child
If you are lucky enough to be able to afford the fees for boarding schools in England or for private daytime education at independent schools then you are in an enviable position. However, what is less enviable is the task of choosing which school to send your child to because there are so many options.
You could hire an educational consultant to do the job for you but you can also easily do the research yourself. Whatever route you decide to take, make sure that you involve your child.
Doing research yourself is easy. The best thing to do is to think about your child’s requirements but also those of the family as a whole. For example, the personality of your child will affect the way it copes in school. A musical child will probably fare better in a school with excellent music facilities and a sporty child will probably do better in a school which provides lots of sporting facilities. A child with special physical or educational needs will obviously need these to be catered for and this may include the need for specialist educational staff or ramps for wheelchair access.
Go through school websites together and draw up a shortlist (try a broad search such as ‘British boarding schools’ or even ‘schools UK’ and see what comes up). Make sure you listen to your child and that your child listens to you. Whilst the schools you are looking at may be all over the country, if the school is near to your home it is probably better for everyone. You get to save on petrol and everyone can see each other more frequently so try and shortlist at least one school that is fairly local to you.
Things you need to think about when weighing up which school to go to are the size of the school and the class sizes. Smaller classes allow for better learning. Also consider the teaching methods and the technologies available to your child.
Find out about whether there are any parental support groups or a liason officer and investigate school fee prices, school hours and uniform requirements. You will also need to know when and how to enrol.
Find out about assessment and reporting procedures, homework and assignment expectations, resources, religious education, extracurricular activities, communication between home and school, options for student participation (e.g. school council) and parental involvement (e.g. parents association).
Some of these answers can be discovered online but others will require a call to the school.
When you have your shortlist drawn up, make sure you have a prospectus from them all and then book a visit. Some schools will have open days that you can attend and others will allow you to book and appointment to suit. If you are considering a boarding school, try and book an overnight stay as this will give your child a chance to see more accurately what the school will be like to attend full-time. Think of questions to ask as you go around and make sure that you dress appropriately for the visit as the school will be checking you out as much as you are checking them out.
If the school has an entrance exam, make sure you do practice papers beforehand. Make sure that you and your child are realistic about which schools they are likely to get in to. Some schools are highly competitive and so turn down many pupils.
Whichever private school you send your child to, if you have done your research properly, it should be ideal for your child and will hopefully help make some of the best days of their lives.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 29th, 2011 at 8:16 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.