Deciding on a school for your kids
When deciding on schools, such as private schools, mothers and fathers must look at ethos and ambiance, guidance, academic performance and extra-curricular pursuits. Parental involvement in the school is sometimes important to many, as are religion, staffing ratio and class size, and cost, if considering private school education.
Nowadays mothers and fathers are likely to be made even more stressed by estimates that suggest that students can assume to have more than ten careers by the age of forty. Schools now need to prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t yet been invented in order to resolve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.
Good schools tend to have certain characteristics in common. Their Principals tend to have:
high expectations of students and of academics
understand what they want their school to accomplish
that know the students and who are known by the students
And have recruited the right academics. It is the teachers’ passion, and ability that will make the main difference to a child’s training and improvement.
It is essential to visit a potential private school and have a really good look around, ideally on a working day. Walk the corridors and see what the students are really like. Watch how the students and academics relate to each other, go into the school rooms and look at the work on the walls and look in the books.
Evaluating a potential school might seem daunting but ask yourself what is it that you really liked about the school? Was it:
the latest interactive technology in every classroom
the excellent sports facilities?
the food?
Or the people at the school?