Finding A Primary School
How early should I start thinking about a primary school for my child?
If you're really serious about it, then before conception because the key to finding a good primary school is where you live. Most primary schools are selective on the basis of geography. The good primary schools around here will have a radius of three, four hundred meters within which they accept people. If you're outside that and within the caption of a primary school that you don't like, there is essentially no hope. Choosing where you live becomes the absolute key to knowing whether you'll get a good primary school. The earlier you do that, the better. Doing that when you're pregnant, moving house when you're pregnant is no fun at all. Moving house when you've got a child is a absolute nightmare.
At what age does my child go to primary school?
You have to go to primary school in the year after his or her 5th birthday. My daughter is 4 and a half at the moment. She was born in October. So she will be going to school or will have to go to school in September 2008. But, most of us start school earlier. Most of us will be involved in reception class which starts a year earlier, or maybe the nature attached to the primary school at the same time. But the official starting of school on the whole school curriculum is the September following the 5th birthday.
How can I find primary schools in my area?
The first place you should go to is the local education authority, that will publish a very useful, descriptive booklet which will not only tell you what schools are and where they are but also tell you what their admission criteria are, and will give you some good guidance on what your chances are of getting in. They will generally say how far away the luckiest child was last year who got in, so that you can judge your chances of which school to go for. If you're wanting other information, the school's guide website has all these schools on them. You can plot them on a map; you can see what's available to you. But with primary schools, it is very much a matter of location.
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.
How do I find out if a primary school is any good?
You visit it. That is the absolute key. Get in there, be shown around by ideally someone other than the head, because people behave when the head comes around. Make sure you're watching everything that's happening around you. See what the children are like. Do you want your children to turn out like that, is that what you see your child being like in eleven years time? Get a feeling for the sort of ambition they have for the children, for the light in the eyes of the children. That's the key thing. And talk to other parents. People will chatter about schools, particularly if they're not selective schools and they don't feel they're competing with you to get in. There's always a lot of gossip on the street as to what schools are like and it's always worth paying attention to.
What should I look out for when I visit the school?
The first thing to look out for is what the head is like. In a small school, like a primary school, the head makes a lot of difference. Their particular interests will set the whole tone of the school. You don't have to like the head, but you do have to respect them. If you don't, if the head can't command your respect then they won't be running the school well. If they can command your respect then you've got to be happy with the way they're running the school, and their attitudes to academic work or whole child development or the way children are taught will inform the way that the whole school is run. You've got to be comfortable with that. The next thing to look at is the children, because you understand children. You will be able to interpret the way they're looking and feeling and acting, as to whether they are happy, as to whether they are engaged, and as to whether they are excited by what's going on around them. Look at the way they behave and the way the place is kept, and make sure it's something you feel comfortable with. Then, because you are going to be spending the next six or seven years in that company, take a look at the parents. Stand outside the school when they arrive in the morning or when they disappear in the evening and say, is that the lot of people that I want my child spending time with, and I want myself spending time with, over the next six or seven years?
How do I tell if the teachers are good?
Very difficult. You will get some idea from an OFSTED report which sometimes will talk about the quality of teaching in a way which gives you an insight into whether the teachers are good or not. Otherwise, "how enthusiastic are the children?" is a pretty good indicator, particularly in a school where there's a particular subject being taught; whether the children really love it, are really focused on it, are starting to say things about it which excite you. That is an indication of good teaching. Other than that, just watch them with the children. It's a very difficult judgment to make, but if you can get a chance when you're going around the school to watch the interaction between pupils and teachers, to see how that process is going on, whether they're attentive, whether they're respectful, or just misbehaving. That's about all you can do, you've got really to rely on the other ends of the spectrum, the head and the children, to make your judgments.
How do I tell if out-of-class activities at the school are any good?
You do that by looking at the notice boards, first of all. If there's a lot going on, it ought to be evident from the notice boards. There will be lists of everything that's happening, there will be lists of children who are participating in things. You will see that that is there, and then when you talk to other parents they will be complaining about how much they have to take their children to and from school late because they are always doing other activities. The enthusiam should be there in the children. You need, when you go around the schools, to find some chance just to chat openly to children to ask them what they really like about the school, what's the most fun things they do, and if there are things really happening in the extracurricular after school activities. Those should be being mentioned.
How do I know if a primary school is right for my child?
That has to focus on your judgment of your child and the environment that they need to fit into. When my older children were growing up, we had the choice between a large state primary and a small state primary. My son was much better suited to the big one, and my daughter better suited to the small one, and that was really just a question of what sort of environment they flourish best in. You will have been around the school, you'll have an idea of how they are different and the way that they are looking at things, and you'll just have to think, will my child work there? If you've got a son who misbehaves a bit and plays up in class, will the school tolerate it or will they just make his life hell? If you've got a child who is academic, is the ethos of the school that they're going to be allowed to express that, to run on beyond what the other children are capable of, and will that be enjoyed and appreciated? Or is it a school that likes to keep children in their little boxes and not to let children develop as they happened to do. There's a lot of difference out there at that level, and you just have to be sensitive to what you think your child will react best to. Don't be afraid to move, or try to move, if it turns out to be a wrong judgment. It can often be a lot easier to move to a hard-to-get-into school two or three years later, when gaps are happening to appear at that school.
There are no good primary schools in our local area. What can we do?
You can go to private schools, but it's very difficult to get into primary school - a good primary school that's distant from you because they will almost all have criteria based on geographical location. If you're in London and don't have a good primary school close to you, the solution is that before conception, convert to Roman Catholicism, because then you have that whole network of schools, and in London they are good. You can get to a Roman Catholic school which is much further away from you than you can into any secular school. So there are ways around the system, ways of expanding things, but none of them are easy and none work well, and if you're stuck with bad primary schools, you take advantage of religious schools, or you just go private. There is no other way out. There is nothing you can do to get yourself into primary schools any distance from you other than those.
