How to choose the right school for your ward
School admissions. It’s that stressful time of the year for parents of toddlers who are entering the formal education system for the first time. And the question that confounds you as a parent is: how to be sure to choose the right school for your child? Should you go with your gut feel about the school or rely solely on your research and analysis? Should popular opinion guide you or should you rely on recommendations from trusted friends and family?
Choosing the school depends on a host of tangible and intangible factors. While no one school can meet all your requirements, the best possible way to make a rational choice is to prioritise and go with the school that meets criteria on which you simply cannot compromise. To make it easier for you to arrive at the all-important decision, here are some tangibles and intangibles that are important.
Curriculum
Curricula works as the guide or framework for how learning will be delivered to your child. If the curriculum is inflexible or impervious, it might fail to prepare your child for an everevolving world being transformed more rapidly than ever. The curriculum needs to be agile and focused on how to learn rather than what to learn to equip your child for the world and workplace that she will enter after 14 years of school. Schools across the Delhi NCR offer a range of curricula: from CBSE to ICSE (the national curricula) to Cambridge and IB (the international curricula). Of these, the former is more focused on content assimilation and many schools choose to go the traditional way encouraging practices like rote-learning. So, if you opt for CBSE/ICSE, it would be better to choose a school that blends progressive teaching-learning methodologies with the national curriculum to achieve good learning outcomes beyond just exam results. Cambridge and IB curricula, by design, are focused on application of knowledge across subject domains and developing critical thinking abilities and their assessments also clearly centre around these skills.
Teaching and learning practices
Project-based learning, experiential learning, holistic development, etc., are buzz words in today’s education ecosystem. However, they mean little if they are not embedded in all of the schools’ practices. This makes it critical for parents to find out if the school being considering merely pays lip service to these concepts or actually has school-wide systems and structures in place to implement and support them. It would be best to check with school representatives about the following while exploring this aspect: a) differentiating teaching and learning practices that make the school experiential/ progressive/ holistic; b) the nature of projects, how project work is integrated with subjects and are projects used for learning or just to assess learning; c) the schools’ approach to literacy and numeracy and the learning outcomes being sought in each; d) the opportunities school provides for developing design thinking, creating solutions through makers spaces, interdisciplinary learning to develop transfer skills and for student leadership etc. to get a good idea of how committed the school is to being experiential or progressive. You can also gain access to this information from current parents of the school’s students or interacting with the students themselves.
Leadership and teacher empowerment
The direction a school will take like any other organisation is strongly influenced by the vision, belief systems and approach of its leadership team. It is therefore a good idea to learn more about the leadership team, their academic background and achievements and their ethos before you make a choice. Educators are the ones that lead the change in the classroom and will determine the actual quality of learning taking place. So, it is important to understand the kind of investment the school makes in their professional development and growth and also the respect and value given to them in the system. The best learners make the best teachers so a good assessment of teacher proficiency would be to focus on their desire to learn and grow and also their ability to empathise with the child. How the teacher makes the child feel about themselves and what they have to learn is more important than factors such as her language fluency.
Infrastructure
Basic sporting, academic and co-curricular infrastructure and facilities are a given in today’s world and most schools are well equipped. However, in this area as well it would help to look beyond just availability at certain significant factors such as:
How effectively does the building design and use of space contribute to complementing the learning environment? Space is considered the third teacher today and can play an important role in how your child learns.
Is the school’s curriculum designed to ensure that each child can make best use of the school’s facilities and infrastructure? How rich and informed are its sports, arts and music programmes?
Has the school invested in treated fresh air units that keep the pollutant levels under control in enclosed spaces where students spend maximum time?
Does the school have CCTVS, transport-tracking applications, visitor management systems, etc.? Is it well-lit without dark corners? Are all areas patrolled regularly by guards/supervisors? Are guards and support staff trained on POCSO and handling of children?
School environment
Reputation of a school is important as it also has a rub off on its students. It is best to check about the school through credible websites or magazines that rank schools based on thorough and extensive research and also check for the accreditations and associations of the school with well-known organisations of repute. But beyond reputation it is also very important to get the right vibe from the school based on personal visits and interactions with the school representatives. There should be a culture of care and warmth that can only be felt through the behaviour and attitude of the various stakeholders of the school. A culture that allows for individual freedom and voice, where students are truly immersed in what they are doing and driven by purpose and passion.
Cultural fit
You must find out if the school’s learning philosophy finds resonance with your own belief system as an alignment in the school and parents value and belief systems is critical for a child’s healthy development. The kind of individual you envision your child to be should be supported and encouraged by the school’s values and philosophy as your home environment and your child’s school are going to be the two strongest influences on her during her formative years. You could find out about this through the behaviours and norms that are encouraged by the school among students and parents. Asking questions about the school’s approach to aspects like entitlement, privilege, inclusion, competitiveness, community and citizenship, social emotional learning, digital citizenship, etc., to name a few would help.
Learning ethos
The physical, academic and social aspects of a school’s learning environment have a direct bearing on your child’s well-being and happiness. They form the basis of your child’s relationship with the school’s learning community as well as her progress over the years. One way to determine the kind of learning environment a school has is to find out if it promotes:
· Competition vs collaboration
· Achievement vs excellence or a balance of the two
· Child-centric vs a one-sizefits-all approach
· Children’s dependence on parents’ vs independent learning
· Learning driven by awards and punishments vs self-directed learning
· Large class sizes vs individualised attention through better student: teacher ratio
Parent engagement
A parent-school partnership is essential in ensuring that your child grows to be the best that she can be. In this context, it is important to understand whether the school offers ample opportunities to parents to interact with the school leadership and teachers, to participate in school activities and contribute time and skills whenever possible. Regular structured interactions, ease of connection and high parent engagement are essential to keep the school community vibrant and healthy. So, this would be another important aspect to look out for. However, over and above these considerations, the overriding factor that should influence your decision is: is your child going to be happy, free and looked after in the school that you choose? Children perform best in environments where they feel secure and joyous – and the school that provides this environment will be perfect for your child.