ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

I might have mentioned before, the elder of my two children will be starting school next September, and we’ve had to apply for his school.

There are a number of things you need to consider when you’re considering your son’s primary education, because you know it’s important (it’s one more thing that as a parent, you have the opportunity to fret about).

Obviously, you want your child to go to a modern school.

Secondly, you need to consider what schools are in your catchment area, as you will stand a better chance of getting your children into one of these. You also need to consider things like siblings: if a child already has a sibling in a school, they are given higher priority than one in equal circumstances without a sibling in that school (at least, that’s how it works in our area).

What we certainly don’t want to happen is for one child to get into one school, and then the second child not be able to get into that school. So our preference will be for a school where we’re already in the catchment area.

But then how do we decide? That gives us the choice of a Church of England school or a “standard” school, both of which rank ahead of the area’s average, and the nation’s average, for educational achievement, so both have good reputations.

So how do you make that decision?

Well, I’d suppose you’d want your child to go to a forward-thinking school, where they would treat everyone equally, regardless of their ethnic background, whether or not they are disabled, irrespective of the marital status and/or sexual orientation of their parents, and where, basically, girls and boys are treated equally, rather than some being shoved through some kind of metaphorical ‘back door’.

You want a school that treats pupils fairly, and instils in them respect for the world around them, respect for other cultures, and teaches them about religious belief, but not in such a way that they don’t feel able to question it.

You want a school, in other words that will give your children the tools to — respectfully, of course — take on the world. So how do you decide which of the two in the catchment area is the most appropriate?

Well, what else is there available that you could possibly consider. Have you looked at the facilities available to the school?

Do you consider which of the two schools has the most modern facilities, and is best suited to your child’s education? To some extent this amounts simply to saying “which school has the most money”. Is that really a fair way to arrive at that sort of decision?

But then again, am I prepared to be “fair” with my children’s education? Or am I more likely to fight as best I can to ensure that they get the best education possible, whether that’s “fair” or not?

And after all, it’s not only the facilities of the buildings themselves, that needs to be consider, it’s the teaching methods as well.

Do the schools offer a computing suite? Do they have internet access (and how is it monitored?) Are children encouraged to experiment to find out the answers to a solution, or does the school prefer more traditional, rote-learning methods?

And then of course there is the curriculum: schools have guidance as to what to teach the children within certain parameters, but it can obviously be approached in different ways, and one school may focus on some areas of the curriculum that another finds less important.

There may well only be small variations between one school and another (particularly when those schools are close to each other) but if you remember that in general — particularly once he/she’s been there a few years — what the school deems important, or appropriate in approach, will tend to mirror what the Head thinks.

You need to consider the approach to education taken by the school: what do they want your child to learn? Are those the same things that you consider important?

Schools may also consider teaching things which aren’t directly part of the curriculum, if they feel it fits in: can you help a child learn more about their place in the world through looking at the history of their region, through the history of education, or through some other context?

So what you do is you pick up a prospectus from each school and you compare them against one another. You discover that the schools have something approaching the same facilities, the same teaching methods, and that while one has scored consistently slightly higher on educational achievement at age 11, both are scoring very well indeed, and as you know personally, going to a below average school doesn’t necessarily hold you back anyway.

Is there anything else to consider?

Yes. Do the schools encourage sporting activity?

Do the schools have access to playing fields? Do they encourage children to take part in solitary games, team games and so on? Do they have access to decently trained staff? Do they actually have proper sporting equipment? Although that’s probably not one to worry about: I’d imagine both schools are relatively well organised so it’s not like they’d be sending the kids out with a hoop and a stick, is it…

So, you’ve had all of these different things to consider, how do you finally decide how to narrow down your child’s first choice school on the application form (bearing in mind that the other school is going down as the second choice, anyway)?

Well, firstly, you eliminate the recreation of a school from 1913 that you’ve used as the basis for all of the photographs (all photographs taken of the school in the Colliery Village area of the open-air Beamish Museum in County Durham — well worth a look if you’re ever in the vicinity), and you just consider the schools that your child is actually in the catchment area for.

Yes, if you ignore the photography, this actually is a serious article…

But then what?

Well, you weigh up all of the factors you’ve already considered, and when the result — as it has done here — has come out fairly close between two schools, you add in one final factor. Which one your son would rather go to.

As it happens, BTP’s request was to go to the school that my wife and myself slightly favoured ahead of the other one anyway, but I like to think that — assuming that there wasn’t a significant difference between the two — we’d always consider his opinion important in making a decision like this.

After all, he will be the one who goes there…

This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 6:49 am and is filed under Articles, Life, Local Interest, The Pickards. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.