What should I consider when looking for primary schools?
The first thing to look for is how well supported the school is by its parents, because that really makes a lot of difference to how well a school is able to deal with the varied backgrounds that these children come from. Some will have had a lot of exposure to books and will have been read to by their parents every night. Others will have had lead a relatively lonely and bleak childhood until then, and this isn't the matter of social class. People who are working hard and in a concentrated way, whatever their level in the world, can leave their children in a state where they don't absorb enough to be ready for school. But if you've got a lot of parents involved in a school, then that whole process of socialization, of working well with a school and giving a school the support it needs to get things right, and giving the school the ambition that parents have to do well for each child, will transmit itself to the school and will be part of that school's ethos. So that's a key thing to look for. It's also something which you as a parent can understand and pick up on, whereas the quality of education being given to children at that age is quite difficult if you're not an expert, to understand what's going on. This is because it's a level of understanding that you've mostly forgotten about and you can't talk to the children about what's happening the way you can in a senior school.
