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    How to Choose the Best School for Your Child (By a Teacher, School Inspector and Parent)
    How to Choose the Best School for Your Child (By a Teacher, School Inspector and Parent)
    How to Choose the Best School for Your Child (By a Teacher, School Inspector and Parent)
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    How to Choose the Best School for Your Child (By a Teacher, School Inspector and Parent)

    By Luanna Johns

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    About this ebook

    A good education is one of the most important things you can give your child, so choosing the best school is crucial. In this book, teacher, school inspector, and parent Luanna Johns shares her tips and secrets for how to choose the best school for your child. With over 20 years experience in education in seven different countries, Luanna has seen the good, the bad, and the truly ugly of schools. Let her show you how to get beyond the PR spin or the local gossip so that you can decide for yourself if this really is the best school for your child.

    In this book you'll learn:
    How to prepare a short-list of schools.
    What questions to ask.
    What to look for during your school visit.
    What the different curriculum options are and what they mean.
    How to prepare for the first day and beyond.
    What to do when problems occur.

    There are some great schools out there, but there are some terrible ones too. This book will help you learn to tell the difference before you enrol your child.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLuanna Johns
    Release dateJan 27, 2014
    ISBN9781311706041
    How to Choose the Best School for Your Child (By a Teacher, School Inspector and Parent)
    Author

    Luanna Johns

    Luanna Johns has been teaching for over 20 years, and is currently working in her sixth country. With experience as a teacher at both Elementary and Secondary levels, school administrator, curriculum co-ordinator, and school inspector, she has been involved in working in and evaluating numerous schools in Asia, the Pacific, Europe, and Africa. Currently living in Hong Kong and married to a High School teacher, she has a pre-school aged son and a secondary-aged daughter.

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      Book preview

      How to Choose the Best School for Your Child (By a Teacher, School Inspector and Parent) - Luanna Johns

      How to Choose the Best School

      for Your Child

      By a teacher, school inspector, and parent

      Copyright 2014 Luanna Johns

      Published by Luanna Johns at Smashwords

      Copyright 2014 by Luanna Johns

      All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

      may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      To John

      Contents

      Chapter 1: Preparing Your ‘Long-List’

      Chapter 2: First Contact

      Chapter 3: The Visit

      Chapter 4: Asking the Right Questions

      Chapter 5: Understanding the Curriculum Options

      Chapter 6: Preparing Your Child

      Chapter 7: Preparing Yourself

      Chapter 8: The First Day

      Chapter 9: When Problems Occur

      Chapter 10: When to Move Your Child (again)

      Summary

      Useful Resources

      About the Author

      Introduction

      Choosing the best school for your child is easy. How do I know? Because I know what makes a good school. I have been a teacher and school administrator for nearly 20 years. I have taught in schools ranging in size from 90 students to 4000 students. My teaching career has taken me to six different countries, and I’ve seen the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (as well as the very good, the very bad, and the I-can’t-believe they-can-get-away-with-this Ugly). Each time I have moved, I have had to choose the best school for me as a teacher, and for the past 11 years I’ve also had to factor in whether it will be the best school for my children.

      It’s often stated that we learn from our mistakes, but not many of us want to risk our children’s education and happiness just to earn ourselves a learning opportunity. So I’m here to help you learn from my mistakes, so you don’t have to make your own, and your children won’t have to suffer the consequences. As a teacher, I care deeply about children, I am passionate about education, and I am appalled when I see schools that aren’t up to par. So I’m here to help you select the best possible place for your child to grow, learn, succeed, and be happy.

      Here’s some more about why I’m qualified to give this advice: I have moved my children five times, to five different schools in five different countries (plus I had an extra move just on my own before I had children). Usually my choice has worked out perfectly, although I did learn a lot from one bad choice I made (and I’ll share this learning with you later). I have been not only a teacher, but also a curriculum co-ordinator and an administrator. I am also part of an international accrediting organization and I conduct inspection visits in schools to see if they are good enough to become accredited. I have to judge the quality of schools for myself as a teacher when I am applying for jobs. I have to consider whether each school is a good choice for my children, and I have to evaluate schools for the organization I work with to ensure it is a quality school offering a quality education. So I’m a teacher, a parent, and an inspector – and in all of those roles I judge the quality of schools. In this book I will share with you the tips and tricks I have learned along the way, so that you can effectively judge which school will be the best one for your child.

      So what do you need to do to choose the best school for your child?

      First, you need to do some research and come up with a ‘long-list’ of schools to consider. You’ll have to rely on some first impressions, but I’ll help you to know which of those impressions are the most important to consider. You’ll have to look at websites, consider the curriculum offered by the school, talk to friends or acquaintances, read any literature the school hands out (I’ll show you how to read these critically and what to really look for, rather than be fooled by the PR ‘spin’). I’ll go through the sorts of things you need to find out from those websites and discussions and school publicity brochures. And then you’ll be able to make your long-list. You will have cut out a lot of inadequate schools and saved yourself the time you would have otherwise wasted visiting them.

      Second, you will need to make that first contact with the school. I’ll let you know what to listen for when you make the phone call, what to ask for when organising your visit, what time of day you should try to schedule the appointment for, and who you should ask to be shown around by.

      Third, I’ll discuss the school visit - What to ask, what to notice, how to spy on the things that are most important. This chapter will cover facilities, resources, staffing, students, the general tone or atmosphere, and the relationships between staff, administration, teachers, students, and parents.

      The fourth chapter deals specifically with what questions you need to ask. You might be asking questions of the administration, the teachers, other parents, and the students (if you get a chance). The answers you get will require some interpretation, but I’ll help you to extract the information you need from their responses.

      Fifth, I’ll give a very brief summary of the common curriculum options offered by various schools. This is most applicable to International Schools, but as many of these programmes are now being implemented in private and state schools around the world as well, this chapter will be useful to you whether you’re living in your home country, or you’re an expat somewhere in the big wide world. The chapter will include information about the International Baccalaureate programmes (IB Diploma, IB Middle Years Programme/MYP, and IB Primary Years Programme/PYP), the National Curriculum of England and Wales (often misnamed as the British Curriculum), the IGCSE and A-Levels, the International Primary Curriculum/IPC and International Middle Years Curriculum/IMYC, the (again misnamed) American Curriculum, the SATs and Advanced Placement (AP). It’s not a complete list of every curriculum out there, but it covers what

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