As soon as a child opens his/her eyes in this competitive world, the parents start dreaming about the bright future of the little one. It is a known fact that schooling plays a vital role in shaping the life of an individual, our life gets majorly affected as it lays the foundation of an individual and shapes their destiny as well. As a parent, you must focus on a few points listed below that could be considered while finalising the best school for your kid.
- RESEARCH: An important step to consider for Parents is to perform research on various available schools as it provides them with an opportunity to do a self-check on parameters they would like to place on priority as per their requirements. Feedback from existing students(parents), Alumni, using websites as a source of information etc would be helpful as it can provide clarity and ease of understanding for a parent to shortlist or select a school for the child.
- VALUES: The core values of school is also an important element while choosing the best school for your kid, some schools lay stress on academics while some schools focus on the overall development of a child. The values that each school demonstrates should be considered by a parent for their child post their analysis as quite often a wrong decision can lead to a burden on the child. Education without values is just like a flower without fragrance, so values do make an integral part of choosing the best school for the child.
- INFRASTRUCTURE: Large playgrounds, clean campus, tidy classrooms, adequate transport facility etc also should play a vital role in deciding on a school. These days most of the schools are trying to upgrade their facility but as a parent, we should also focus on which school also shares maintenance of the facility as a key focus area. Quite often ill-maintained campuses can lead to negative feelings about the school.
- ACCESSIBILITY: Often the most ignored but most important point a parent should consider is how accessible is the place of learning for the child. Travelling long distances often creates havoc in a child’s daily routine, ideally a facility closer to a place of residence eases out unwarranted delays and physical stress for a child. Ease of location/accessibility also can help parents in case of an unforeseen emergency or a situation. Ideally, a well-connected location with ease of public transportation would create a long term impact.
- PERFORMANCE: School’s performance should be one of the key deciding factors and should include both academic performance and the overall development of a child. The easiest way to identify a high performing school would be the results of Board examinations as it gives a fair idea about the teaching impact on the students. Overall holistic development of a child is difficult to validate but one can easily analyse from the results of inter-school activities that are common these days. A good school would have an ideal balance of academic as well as extracurricular activities.
- REPUTATION: School’s often follow their process and standards, over some time they also develop a reputation of their own. Reputation is again built on the performance of the school and the impact they have created in the community over a while. As a parent please choose what would suit your requirement ( Strict environment, academics etc).
- TEACHERS/ STAFF: A key parameter should include student-teacher ratio, educational background of the teaching staff, availability of additional resources like a phycologist or a good art teacher can also benefit a child. A healthy student-teacher ratio helps a child as they get better attention and learning also increases. The teacher also has a better chance of attending to the students and making the learning more meaningful and leaves a better impact on each child’s learning. Sometimes schools tend to reduce the number of classrooms and they increase the student strength but this results in an environment of overburdened teachers who find it difficult to deliver.
- FEEDBACK: Often highly reputed schools can have a different effect on a child as each individual has a different requirement, speaking to parents, existing students, possibly faculty would give a parent a clear picture. As a parent, it would give clarity if the feedback is coming in from existing parents as they can co-relate with them as learning requirements are more or less similar.
- INSPECTION: Nothing would be better than visiting school yourself and checking all that you expect out of a school for your child. Visiting School during regular school hours would provide much clarity unlike the playbooks or the Brochures which we normally look at initially. It is critical in the case of a Boarding school as a child is expected to stay on campus for their entire schooling period.
A careful selection using all the above possible scenarios would be the right method for finding the best school for your kid that is going to shape up a child’s destiny and would save them from stress and discomfort.