What should I consider when looking for private schools?
What is mportant to consider when looking for a private school is whether you can afford it. It's a long commitment. You're setting your child down a different road than the state system. You've got to expect to have to stay the course. A top-line private school education is the best part of a quarter of a million pounds and that is a very heavy obligation to take on. There are cheaper alternatives, like some of the great day schools. You can get through for much less. You can probably get through for one hundred thousand pounds or so, but that's quite enough. And you may be able to move between one system and another. There are senior schools where you don't really have to go to a prep school beforehand, and there are the grammar schools where you can go to the prep school first and give yourself the best possible chance of getting into the grammar. So there are ways of finessing the system, but by large the thing you have to decide on is money. If the money is ok, it's whether want it socially. Is this the kind of world you want to live in? Do you want to shut yourself away from the rest of people and just focus on eduacation as something on its own? Or do you want to mix it and give your child a chance to grow up with everyone else? That's very much an emotional decision.
