Perhaps one of the most important decisions you will make for your child as a parent will centre on their education. You will need to decide which school offers the right teaching methods for you, will provide the best possible resources for your child, and will supply the greatest chance of success for their future endeavours. Making the right decision could mean placing your child on a path to a prestigious and wonderful life, engaged in a fantastic career, and the wrong decision could leave them struggling to find their place in the education ladder. It’s a lot of pressure for anyone to be under, so where do you start when you’re thinking about the factors to consider before enrolling your child in a school?
Teachers Are Extremely Important
Excellent teachers are what quality schooling is all about. The school you select for your child may have the latest gadgets, the best sports equipment and the least breakable pens known to man-kind, but if they don’t have the teachers to back all of this stuff up, they are essentially useless. A great teacher is not only capable of teaching more to students, they’re also capable of connecting with them, accelerating the speed at which children learn and helping them to enjoy their time at school so that they become more engaged in classes. Look for schools that have passionate teachers, capable of giving in-depth instruction and discussing subjects with their pupils. Teachers should never be treat as just another body to stand around in a classroom, they are the most essential part of a learning experience.
Try Not To Focus Too Heavily on Test Scores
In some cases, the standardized test scores a school receives can provide a good indication of whether the school in question is doing well at educating their students to the correct standard. However, sometimes, good test scores are simply a sign that teachers have been good at helping the students to learn everything they need to know for that specific test, and nothing more. Remember that the standardized tests your children will go through only cover about a third of the curriculum that should be taught in schools, so if the teachers are focusing too heavily on this, and not enough on other topics, your child will be missing out on the majority of their education. If the scores of a particular school have been going up recently, speak to the teachers and ask why this is happening, and make sure that they’re capable of giving you a thoughtful answer, not just ‘Oh we’re just getting better at teaching the test’.
Don’t Worry About the Name of a School
Just because you’re looking at a ‘Private’ or ‘Charter’ school doesn’t mean that it’s going to provide a better quality of education than a public establishment. Studies have shown that only one in five private schools perform better than the other schools that they replace, meaning that just because something may seem like a higher standard because of the name, doesn’t mean that it is actually better. Just like you should never judge a book by its cover, don’t judge a school according to its title. Remember that it’s what goes on inside of those brick walls that you really need to think about.
