Choosing a school for your children

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?It was only up until about an hour ago that I finally realised the big deal I had made out of deciding on a suitable school for my children wasn’t necessary at all.  I think that when I fell pregnant I began thinking about a school for my daughter. What was the criteria I should use when choosing? Private or public? Large or small? Local or a distance away? All girls or co-educational? What about how the school performed in Naplan testing? It was an absolute minefield.

There are no less than 60 schools in or near my home. Private, public, primary, secondary, religious, non religious, you name it. How on earth was I going to choose? I think I spoke to every parent with a child the same age as mine, every parent who ever had a child go through a school in my area and every parent who ever had a child that went to school. I was spinning round and round in circles. What would be the grounds for my choice? Good reputation, small class sizes, religious, locality, good teaching staff, good sports program. Who knows?

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We finally decided on a very local, small Catholic, co-educational school for my daughter. She did fantastically well in her first year of Prep. It wasn’t until she started Grade 1 this year that she had her first experience with bullying. It broke our hearts. We’ve been back and forth http://www.gaywomenforum.com/user__profile~logins_key__33423.html with the school for about 6 separate incidents of bullying with the same little girl and we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. It wasn’t until we had our interview yesterday with one of the school heads for our son, who starts next year, that we started to doubt our original decision choosing this school and thought about starting the whole decision process again.

I just started thinking about it this afternoon when it dawned on me. There are always going to be things in life that you’re not happy with. Your nieghbours, work colleagues, (family for goodness sake), school friends and teachers. It’s how you react to situations that crop up, that will help you get through some of life’s little stumbles. What’s to say that little girl who bullied my daughter leaves next year? Or, if we changed schools, there’d be more bullies, terrible teachers, a careless attitude by the school staff. Who knows? Any other doubts we have with the school in relation to our daughter’s educational needs will be picked up by myself and my husband and providing a loving, supportive home environment where there’s no such thing as a stupid question and all curiosities will be encouraged and hopefully answered.

I’ve decided to stick with this school, continuing to develop my daughter’s resilience and help her to become more assertive. Besides everything else that’s gone on, we’ve been happy with this school.

Now, what high school?