How To Know If A Secondary School Is Right For Your Child

How do I know if a secondary school is right for my child?

You start with a real understanding of what your child is like, particularly their character, because it is how a school going to respond to what your child does in that school. Whether they are studious, whether they are disruptive, whether they like to play the fool, whether they really need inspiration or discipline to make them work. Is the school set up for that kind of child? School's characters differ a lot, particularly in that kind of area. I remember when I was choosing secondary schools for my older children, that we settled on a school which had a particularly relaxed view on how children should behave, not that it was undisciplined, but it just gave them latitude and that was what my children needed. A school that was stricter, they would have been eternally on detention and unhappy and miserable. So you just, if you choose on that sort of basis and that will involve looking around a school and getting a feel for whether what's on offer will suit your child, then you are going to be giving yourself the best chance of making a good choice. But you will never know, you can never be certain. You will always be anxious about it. So particularly in the earlier years of secondary school; watch what's happening, if things are going wrong, try and move. It is not, at all, impossible to move secondary schools before the child is fourteen. It is really quite easy. There are always gaps or periods somewhere else and if there is something going wrong at the school, the school should help you and find somewhere else that suits the child better. So take a positive and interested attitude to it and you should come out okay.