A Quick Guide to Choosing a Perfect School For Your Child

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The know-it-alls and the clueless ones — as parents, we all fall somewhere between these extremes categories, when it comes to hunting for the right school for our children. Well, whichever category you belong to, you obviously want the best education for your kid. Especially with the times we live in, parents need to be extremely picky and careful about the first school you trust our child with. And rightfully so!

Having recently admitted my twins to school, I can empathize with every parent who is trying to get their child in the ‘best pre-school’  but soon after they take admissions, they are not sure if their decisions were right or not.  

Read on as I share my experience and tell you how we went about choosing the right pre-school and admission procedure for our twins. Hope this helps…

Research a lot

I read a lot and discussed a lot – I found out popular schools in and around my area. I prepared a list of fee structures, school timings, pick and drop facilities, day boarding facilities, extra-curricular activities and other such important and not-so-important factors about those schools.

Shortlist the ones that suit you best

Visiting the school’s website and considering factors like proximity from my home, fee structures, focus on academics as well as extra-curricular activities and general reputation of the school. We finally applied to just 3 schools of the tens of schools we had inquired about.

Admit them and don’t look back

My children got selected in two schools of the three we applied for and we finally admitted our children on the basis of extra-curricular activities offered by the school.

Try to remain Guilt free

Once you have taken admission, I would suggest you avoid getting into the ‘second thoughts’ phase. Unless you wanted to get admission in one particular school that revealed its results, after you had already completed admission formalities in the current school. Ideally, there is no ‘perfect school’ as a lot depends on the students and their backgrounds, their circumstances along with the exposure and training that a school provides.

Prepare them, but yourself first!

Revising the good touch – bad touch concept, storytelling on how school is going to be like, giving them tiffin boxes at home so they know they need to finish them, mosquito repellants, uniforms, water bottles, Spiderman bags, hand sanitizers, and hugs – we seemed to be all set.

Release – let go!

Will they eat fine? Will they tell their teacher if they are not well? Will the teachers treat them like we do? Will they adjust? Will they make new friends? Will they forget us? The questions kept haunting us for days. And finally when the day came, I was a lot more nervous than my kids on their first day of school. But all of that gradually phased out as they began to adjust in their ‘second home’. There was some crying (ahem, on both ends) but it kept getting better.

Our kids were going to be gone for about half of their day to school and something inside us was sinking, but well, every parent has to go through this one day or another, and it’s for the best! Use a lot of hugs and kisses to deal with the separation, and use a lot of faith to know your child is spreading his wings, and is growing just fine!