When choosing a school for your child – is the closest school necessarily the best option?
Choosing the right school for your child is one of the toughest decisions faced by parents. It’s a decision faced not once, but in most cases around three times in your child’s school career.
First there’s the decision as to which pre-school will be the safest and most nurturing and with the best approach to teaching little ones. Then comes the even more daunting choice of primary school and eventually high school.
There are so many key factors which play a part in these decisions and things can get quite complicated in the process.
- education – school’s academic track record, quality of education offered, teaching methods, approach to education as a whole, curriculum
- bang for your buck – personal finances, cost of school fees, sibling discounts, value for money, long-term affordability
- ethos and culture of the school – discipline and even the religious grounding of the school
- environment and safety – are my children going to be in a safe environment that promotes learning while ensuring they are secure?
- sport and extra-murals on offer
- the school run – juggling family logistics around school closing times, aftercare times, and extramural practice times
- and the dreaded distance and traffic factor
When prioritizing all of the above different parents will have different requirements and expectations and thus very different lists, but often it is the last one on the list above – the traffic factor – which inevitably gets placed at the top (if not close to the to the top) of parents’ lists and for understandable reason.
Living in a city and dealing with traffic congestion throws a number of factors into the mix with parents having to take distance from home, traffic en route, pick-up time and distance from work, etc. into consideration.
In our experience, however, basing the decision mainly on the convenience of having your child at a school close to home or work is not advisable. It should rather be viewed as an added bonus if you find the right school, which ticks all the other more important boxes, that happens to be in a good location when it comes to the dreaded traffic factor.
What should be at the top of your list?
Which factors really matter when choosing the right school?
Here’s a list of our top 6, to help you:
- A school’s approach to education – is it well-balanced and holistic or is it purely about educating and achieving the best pass rate,
- School ethos and values – does the school have Christian values and ethos?
- Quality of education – what curriculum does the school follow and what is their approach to teaching?
- The school environment – does the environment encourage learning and a sense of well being? The extremes on the school environment scale are either too modern ‘high-tech’, cold and clinical or dilapidated and run down.
- Class size – when it comes to class size, smaller is always better! Children can end up ‘lost’ in a larger class, struggle to make friends and can even end up falling further and further behind due to a lack of personal attention.
- Safety and security – in today’s world this has to be at the top of our list and plays an important part in your personal day-to-day life. You can get on with your day, secure in the knowledge that your child is safe throughout their school day.
When it comes to factors which are important and which should be top of the list MPS definitely ticks all the right boxes. At the top of our list is Raising ChangeMakers.
We are not about just getting learners through a grade and through a phase… we believe in Raising learners to become young people who effect real, positive change as we release them into the world.
The key ingredients in our ChangeMakers recipe are:
- High Touch Quality Education,
- Innovative Learning Methodologies,
- Christian Values,
- small classes and
- our unique environment.
Pay us a visit to see for yourself.
