10 things to know before picking your child's school

Resources and tools

1. How do you find a school near you? - With this handy online tool

2. How does our chosen school rate with Ofsted? - Get the government agency report of schools you're considering

3. Where is your school in the top school rankings? - The Sunday Times' list of top schools, from primary to secondary, pre-prep and independent

4. How does it fare in the Good Schools Guide? - Not every school is included but this book parses them on everything from academic programs to fashionability of the school uniform. The site has both free and paid-for content.

Choosing a school

5. Shocker: Carpark gossip isn't always the best way to pick your child's learning institution

6. Private schools are 'no better for A levels' - Research suggesting the brightest pupils do well no matter where they study contradicts other recent studies

7. More than half of secondary schools are substandard

On paying for private school

8. Get ready for some sticker shock - The cost of a private education can cost more than £350,000 from ages 3 to 18

9. The big maths problem - Should you shell out for a house in a good cachement area or pay private school fees?

10. How your home can pay school fees

Comments

[A Pupil]

Be born with the intelligence to get into a grammar school is the best answer!

[A mother]

One alternative, of course, is Home Education, particularly for AlphaMummies who work from home. Increasing numbers of families are doing it - and most local areas have all sorts of social HE groups as well as pooling resources for foreign language classes, pottery, you name it...

More info at the Education Otherwise website

[Starling]

There's a choice? Over here it was either several CofE schools (no chance, they refuse to accept non-believers), or the local (terrible) county council school. There are other good schools further away, but they're all horrendously oversubscribed.

Private schools? Do I look rich?

[ABetaDad]

Bottom line is that paying for school (or buying an expensive house in the catchment area) is just like buying any service. There are also sorts of prices and all sorts of offerings and some are good value and some are bad value.

My advice, based on my own experience of selecting a new private school for my kids for this September is as follows:

1. Pick a school that you can definitley afford for the long haul. Do not borrow money and/or hope to get a scholarship.

2. Look at the kids and the parents when the school day is ended and dropping off time and ask yourself whether these are the kind of kids you want your kids to grow up with and do you feel you have something in common with the parents.

3. Do not be obsessed by league table positions. Instead, choose a school in the top 500 nationally and where the senior school gets 4 - 5 kids into Oxford or Cambridge each year but avoid the intensely selective schools that are only high up the league table because they can pick and choose kids not because they have better teaching standards.

4. Go coeducational - the facilities are generally better than in a single sex school (girls only schools generally have poorer facilities).

5. If you want to go private choose a private school that is near a set of very good state school - the competition keeps the fees down and the standards up. They have to work harder to prove they are worth the money.

[Vicky]

Why is choosing a school such agony? I thought it would all be over when I finally sorted out the primary school but it is never ending!

A friend recently told me that at various private schools you can pay a lump sum for the fees up front. This might help if you have equity in your property because you could take out a mortgage.