A school is an important place for the overall development of the child. If a child is put in a good school, then it will surely help the child in finding the right path for their career. Schools should focus on providing the child with an exposure to academic as well as non- academic activities. These schools should provide individual attention to each child and provide them with the encouragement to pursue their goals based on their interest levels.
How do you identify the best school? Infrastructure or Teaching or Student Performance?
Finding the right kind of school for children is a very difficult task in today’s scenario. There are thousands of schools which are running in the country, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses in some of the other factor. There are a few schools which impart a very good education, but may be lacking behind because of their poor infrastructure and less funds. There are also schools which have excellent infrastructural facilities but fall behind in the field of teaching, in other words, the teaching methodology may not be very effective.
In order to address this problem of finding the right school for children, there are certain parameters which must be given due importance. Infrastructure should not be the only defining factor in selecting the right school, since many parents get attracted to flashy infrastructures of schools rather than focussing more on the teaching methods, extra-curricular activities, individual attention to each student, results in the exams, etc. all of which are important for the child’s overall mental, physical and emotional well-being.
There are certain organizations which conduct surveys on schools based on various criteria. The survey done for State board schools will be different from those of CBSE, ICSE and IGCSE schools. These surveys help us in finding out the best schools, and these are determined based on the scores achieved by the schools in each parameter. The school which gets the highest score in all parameters is ranked the best and other schools having a lower score will be ranked accordingly in ascending order.
A good school survey will rank the best schools using the following parameters:-
1) Faculty
Teachers, that is, the faculty play a very important role in imparting education to the students. Teachers should be well qualified and they must interact with all students in the class to know what they have understood and learnt. A highly interactive class will help the students to understand and retain what they learn.
2) Studies
The teaching methodology needs to be highly interactive and teachers should encourage students to put forth their ideas and opinions on the various topics which are taught by them. Also in today’s digital world, teachers should use videos and interactive presentations using projectors to teach the various subjects. The effectiveness of these teaching methods can be assessed by looking into the results which are obtained by the students in the exams as well as judging their retention ability.
3) Individual attention
Each and every student is different and has some of the other unique capability as compared to others. Some students may have a higher retention ability while some may have lower retention ability. Teachers should provide individual attention to all students so that they address the problems which the students face while learning.
4) Sports
Sports play a vital role in the overall development of the child. Schools should have all the necessary facilities to encourage students to participate in sports since taking part in sports is equally important to doing well in academic learning.
5) Extra- Curricular activities
Schools should encourage students to take part in extra- curricular activities like dancing, painting, singing, drama, and any other activity which students might genuinely like to do as their hobby or according to their passion and level of interest.
6) Infrastructure
The infrastructure of schools should have facilities like good classrooms, study halls, canteen, student lockers, washrooms, playground, tennis and football courts, auditorium, swimming pool, stationery shop, medical room, etc. There should also be lush greenery and cleanliness around the campus of the school which is very important for the environment as well as for the good health of everyone.
7) School management software
The effectiveness with which a school is managed should also be considered in addition to the above-mentioned criteria for selecting the right school for your child. Schools which use school management ERP software are more professionally managed as compared to those schools which don’t use such software. School management software helps the parents to know their children’s academic and non-academic performance, attendance record, bus-tracking, fees, etc.
Selecting a good school is not an easy task, but looking into the aforementioned factors, the best schools can be selected and this facility of providing the list of the best schools is provided by school surveys and rankings, which are provided by many organizations and is easily available on the internet.
