When considering which school to choose......

[Earlybird]

How much does a school prospectus and website matter?

Does a glossy prospectus and info filled website make you more interested in a school? And conversely, does a bland/uninformative website or basic prospectus affect your interest/enthusiasm?

The former from a marketing point of view would attract my attention. You listen to other parents and there views but thier child is not yours and your child may have different strengths or weakenesses so its difficult to make a judgement. Education in this country I am sorry to say is very 'suck it and see'. I am keeping an open mind for the first year and if I dont like the progress then I will probably consider moving to another school if it is possible. This is a mother that has had a child in Nursery for two years and one year in reception and not once has been given any feedback or report or appointment to discuss his progress, so not too happy with system to date.

Sorry I meant to put one year in reception for half a day.

I phoned for the prospectus of several schools locally, so yes it did make a difference.

One school didn't put the full postage on, as I was charged £1 just to receive the prospectus - I didn't bother taking that application any further.

For me the website, increasingly, matters more than prospectus - as websites are becoming the real public face of schools.

To me, a glossy prospectus says money to burn and not much substance to support it. On the other hand a neat well-organised website, with logical navigation, no grammatical errors (EVER), carefully maintained so that information is not blatantly out of date - and bits of interesting-but-directly-relevant side information (eg the Arnold House year 3 reading list that frogs linked to once), and downloads of things you'd get from the prospectus pack (eg application form), would swing things completely in its favour.