School season is here again when most parents
are faced with the challenge of finding good schools for their children. It’s either
as the first school their children would be attending, moving to a new area or
a stage where they are moving to the next stage of their education; Pre-nursery,
nursery or primary school. There are basically some things to consider when
scouting for a new school some of which are more important than others. Below
are some tips to guide you.
The first thing you should have at the back
of your mind is that you can never get a school that suits your desire
absolutely, schools that have everything you had ever wanted are never in
existence. There would always be one thing or the other that you may likely
have to overlook and cope with; it could be the colour or the design of the
school uniform, the lunch menu, the after school class arrangement, the school
bus, the school fees etc. Whatever the case may be, make sure you don’t have a
sensitive issue to cope with that could mar your child’s career. For example,
if a school has teachers who don’t dress properly, or don’t know how to develop
skills for the children, I think you need to review your choice with your
spouse; they are too sensitive issues to be overlooked.
The kind of future you would like to create
for your children matters a lot and the grooming begins right from their
pre-nursery days. If you want an outstanding, courageous child that will stand
tall among his or her peers, then anyhow school won’t work for you but if you
want a child that will just be there, who goes to school because everybody goes
to school, then you can afford to peach your tent in a school that will enable
you achieve that. The future you envision for your child matters a lot and
don’t forget this is the foundation you are building for your own future as
well which you must give serious consideration to.
Clean and secure location is a non negotiable
characteristic you should look out for especially for your preschools. There
should not be any health and safety hazards anywhere around the school.
Furniture and any equipment must not have sharp edges. Electric outlets must
have covers and anything else that poses harm to kids should be kept out of
their reach. Furthermore, Is the school located by major road side, major motor
parks, markets or any other area very liable to attack from riots in the
community? How effective are the internal security personnel? How easy is it
for the security control measures to be punctured by an outsider? These
questions are very important in deciding which school you choose.
It’s not just enough for a school to be
established, it must be well equipped with the necessary basic facilities to
keep the school kid-friendly. Check out for facilities such as the sick bay or
at least first aid box, toilet room, no-slip flooring both for play and
learning, various types of toys, library for good story books, learning aids in
form of CDs. The classrooms should be well-lit and well ventilated. Positive
and colourful designs should be visible for the kids.
Finance is very important! Under normal
condition, parents are supposed to have started saving for their children’s
education right from the cradle but due to one reason or the other, most of us
don’t get to start doing it on time in this part of the world. For whatever
it’s worth, your finance should be considered so that you don’t put your child
through emotional trauma of being sent in and out of the school at intervals
for inability to meet up with payment deadlines. Some of us have been there before;
it doesn’t smell nice at all. Don’t fall into the illusion that the most expensive
school would be the best for your child. There are still schools that charge
moderate fees yet they deliver and would easily fit into your child’s career
plan. Try cutting your coat according to your size.
However, there are times when you have to
stretch yourself a bit more than you could afford at a time, times you don’t
have to consider the financial implication but all you are set out for is
giving your child the best because we are talking about the child’s foundation
here. Child’s education is one of the aspects of life that could sometimes defy
the saying that one should cut his coat according to his or her size. The
reason is that cheap things could be more expensive on the long run. For
example, if you are considering your pocket and you send your child to just anyhow
school, by the time the school is done with him or her, it’s either you spend
more money to rebuild the already messed-up foundation again or he goes on
building on the faulty foundation. If
you have schools around and it’s like they don’t meet the educational standard
you had envisioned for your kid, if you see a better one but a bit more
expensive than what you felt you could afford, I don’t think you should
hesitate taking your child there. All you need do is structure your finances
and let some things go off your list for some time. I know quite a number of “big
boys” in town who do monthly contribution to pay school fees for their
children.
Is the school approved by the government? No
matter how good a school is, irrespective of the good hands they could have, if
it has not been approved by the government, please trash it. Sending your
children to unapproved schools could be very risky because if the government
decides to come after them just like they did to some higher institutions with
satellite campuses few years ago in Lagos Nigeria, it means you have set up
your child for demoralization and set back because this could translate to some
wasted years of no certificate.
For those of us that are looking for schools
for our nursery and primary school kids, let’s try as much as possible to get
schools not too far from either our homes or our working places. This will be
very important in case there is any emergency that requires our urgent attention.
You know your child better so I won’t expect
you to be in the dark concerning the school curriculum. There are some kids who
do well with Montessori system of teaching while some do well with the behavioural
and cognitive method. It depends on what you think will benefit your child. At
this point, I will like to mention that if your child is doing well in a particular school,
if he is the best student in that school, pull him out fast and take him or her
to another school that will be more challenging for him or her. That’s another
way of developing your child’s self esteem and taking him or her out of the
comfort zone.
Low teacher-student ratio. Some schools,
because they are very interested in getting money or perhaps, lack adequate facilities,
they lump students up in classes. Ideally, a teacher should handle about ten
pupils in a class especially for pre-scholars but having teacher aides or
assistants could be reasonable when having classes with larger number of
pupils. For any teacher to do thorough jobs on your kids there should be a low
teacher-student ratio.
Conclusively, you may need to talk to some
parents in the locality for advice and recommendation if you are moving to a
new location. However, after you must have assessed with the above tips and
take series of advice from parents, you need to work with what your conscience
leads you to do. The parents must have assessed using some of the above
mentioned parameters and people’s recommendations based on their own experience
at a particular time with their own children but you are in the best position
to know what makes your child tick. All the best!
(C) rwnomoreloss 2012
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