Choosing a school

Education Five “Must-Dos” When Choosing a School for your Child

By Judith Judd

When my daughter was four, she came with us to visit several primary schools so that we could decide where she should start her school life. At the end of the day we asked which one she liked best. “The one with the shoe shop” she said. As it happened, we also liked the one with the (pretend) shoe shop and that is where she went.

Maybe it doesn’t always make sense to take a 4 year old’s advice about where they would like to start school but it is always important to put your child at the centre of the process. Parents know better than anyone how different individual children can be. Some schools are good at catering for children of all sorts. Some are tailored to the needs of academic children. Others have long experience in educating children who struggle with school work. One of the first things to bear in mind when choosing a school is that you can’t tell much about it from its label. In recent years, governments have created new types of school – academies, specialist and free schools, for example. In some parts of the country, parents can still choose grammar schools, which select pupils by an examination at the age of 11. Research about different types of schools reveals that the type of school doesn’t guarantee the level of the education. There are good and bad academies and good and bad schools run by local authorities.

If your child is academic and there are no grammar schools near where you live, don’t worry. A big study from Durham University suggests that bright children do just as well in non-selective schools. Professor Stephen Gorard says: “Dividing children into the most able and the rest does not appear to lead to better results for either group.” He says that there is no evidence that a particular type of school leads to better attainment.

However, he adds that parents may choose grammar schools for the very understandable reason that they tend to

cream off the more advantaged pupils in an area so that the neighbouring schools have to cope with a disproportionate number of disadvantaged and more challenging children. So the first rule for choosing a school is to ignore the label. It won’t tell you much.

The second is to visit the school. When you do, check out the relationship between children and teachers. Do teachers pay attention to what the children are saying? Do they respect them? That’s true for older children, too, and it’s particularly true when you’re choosing a primary school and want your child to have a happy start to education.

Find out what progress pupils make during the time they arrive at school and by the time they leave. Schools’ exam results at GCSE and in national tests at the age of 11 give an idea of the sort of children who attend the school but they don’t indicate progress. Grammar schools get better results than neighbouring schools because they select clever pupils. You can get an idea how good a school’s teaching is by looking at progress measures available on government websites for that school. Look at the Ofsted report. Inspectors give ratings for schools: outstanding, good, requires improvement, inadequate. But equally important is their assessment of how different groups of children fare. A school may do well with able children but not those who struggle and vice versa. The reports also give an idea of a school’s strengths and weaknesses. That’s particularly important for older children who may have particular talents and interests, perhaps sport, history or languages. Talk to the Head Teacher. School leadership is crucial to a school’s success. It’s important that you have confidence in the Head and that she/he impresses you with their engagement with staff and pupils.

To most of us, choosing a school feels like a huge and daunting process. One of the reassuring messages from the research in our book is that, though schools and teachers are important in helping children to thrive, parents’ support at home matters more.

Judith Judd is co-author, with Wendy Berliner, of the book How to Succeed at School: Separating Fact from Fiction: What Every Parent Should Know. Published by Routledge and available from Amazon and good book stores.