School Guide

How to Choose a School for Your Child

Published by SchoolAdvisor | Nov 11, 2013

 

There are a lot of parents who are bewildered about choosing the right school for their children. I have had quite a few parents coming to ask me about this issue. It is quite hard nowadays, given that there are so many schools in Malaysia that run so many different programs, such as the International Baccalaureate (IB), British curriculum, American curriculum, Canadian curriculum, etc. It is rather confusing for parents who don’t understand much about the different education systems and what difference it will make. In my opinion, there are three aspects to consider when it comes to choosing a school:

1)      Choose a school that is academically focused.

You cannot go wrong if the school is academically strong. After all, a school is essentially a place for a child to develop learning skills and acquire knowledge to prepare him/her for future studies and a career.

2)      Find a school that has a friendly environment.

It is very important that a child can be happy at school and that the school has a friendly environment and that the children are happy and well behaved. The last thing you want is for your child to get bullied at school, which may affect his or her mental health and will put the child in a situation that he or she hates going to school and becomes emotionally withdrawn.

3)      Ideally select a school that relates to your long term study ambitions for your child.

What I mean by this is that each type of international school has some kind of focus on a particular part of the world. If your aspiration is for your child eventually to study at a British university or a university in Malaysia offering British degrees, then I would recommend aiming for a school that focuses on the British curriculum such as IGCSE and A-levels. If you think your child will aim for a university in North America, e.g. the USA or Canada, I would then recommend a school with an American or Canadian curriculum. The reason for this is that the schools with particular international flavors give students some introduction to the culture of the nation concerned and that can help when it comes to university applications and interviews further down the road.

A good school is therefore a school that your child is looking forward to going to every day, enjoys learning there, and gives him or her flavor of another culture that he or she may be looking to be part of in the future.