Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Education

Join the discussion on our Education forum.

MUMS, Can you really tell when a school is not the "right" one for your child?

7 replies

balancingact · 19/03/2007 15:20

Hi,
My DD is 3 and a bit and is in a small nursery at the moment. We have been considering her situation for some time as her 2 best mates are a year above her and are leaving in Sept to go to Reception. She will then be one of the oldest kids there and i suspect she will be quite sad as one of her friends had already left earlier (moved countries). ANYWAY, we had put her down for a number of private schools for reception -- one of them, also offers places at nursery if you pass some sort of assessment. Anyway, to cut a long story short, she passed this assessment and we have now decided to put her there from Sept. For those that are still following me, well done. My question is, will it be "easy" for me to see if this school is the right one to keep her in (as from nursery she can go to reception till 11/13 if i wanted to )- clearly, i will still visit the other schools we've put her down for in case we feel she should go somewhere else from reception onwards. She will be our first child to go to "big school" and i'm just anxious to pick up any vibes that things are not going well.
The school she is going to has the reputation of being quite academic but i have visited the school and thought it lovely and the boys that showed me around i could take home with me. I think she's bright (let's face it, all of us think our kids are bright) but i don't want to keep her there if it's not the right school for her. just really paranoid i will not see the signs!! (i live in london so school places are very dear so if i miss the decision to change at reception i might not have much of a window). I know it's some way off, but because we've had to pay a deposit in this nursery, it's fresh in my mind!

OP posts:
RTKangaMummy · 19/03/2007 16:16

So the children you saw at the private school you could see her being like in 5 years time

Is that correct?

Does it have stuff she is interested in

Like if she likes art/painting how is the art dept?

If she likes books how was the library?

balancingact · 19/03/2007 16:22

I think so -- am just very aware that sometimes parents (incl myself) might be tempted to project their own image to their kids and i want to make sure i avoid that. I did not grow up here and my education was not the best (40 kids to a classroom, not much extra curricular activities, no provision for anyone that wasn't mainstream etc.)
The art was really good, the library was also good and said to have generous lending policies etc. The thing that struck with me with the kids were how polite and confident they were (and because all of the older children were asked to show the parents around, i know i didn't get the "handpicked" ones IYSWIM).

OP posts:
RTKangaMummy · 19/03/2007 16:23

It sounds deffo brill

I would go for it

Judy1234 · 19/03/2007 16:25

Never very sure about this - right for the child kind of thing. I suppose extremely shy children may well suit very small friendly schools but usually all schools have all kinds of children os you can find what suits you. Children who are not clever at all obviously shouldn't be at schools like the one you mentioned and some children have special needs which need to be catered for in certain types of school or mainstream and some are musicl geniuses who need to go to a special music school like Chethams but other than that I think most children thrive in good schools without there being much of a right for them kind of thing about it.

It sounds like a school you would be happy with and you could always move her later or at 11+ if it's not working out.

roisin · 19/03/2007 16:32

I think if you visit a few schools it is clear which is the right one; it was for us for primary anyway, and I hope we're right for secondary.

balancingact · 19/03/2007 16:33

Thanks for input. One of the things that we liked at first about this school is that it had the option of teaching kids Mandarin Chinese (i am half chinese but never learned the language) and DH thinks absolutely brilliant if she could learn the language (or at least have option to learn it) - and we caught ourselves thinking - oh lordy, are we turning into pushy parents etc etc. To be fair, i really liked the feel of the place when i visited it and DD wanted to go there straight away ("as in right now mummy" in her exact words) ... i guess it's a constant re-evaluation....

OP posts:
RTKangaMummy · 19/03/2007 16:35

That sounds brill about mandarin

You can learn together

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread