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Writer's pictureHarshal

21 Factors To Choose A School For Your Kid

Applying Frameworks And Research To Prioritize The Right Irish Primary School

When selecting a house, we think about location, size, and price. But what factors should we think about when choosing a school for our child?

My wife, Sindhu, and I are new to the Irish education system and want to enroll our 4-year-old son in primary school. We spent 20 hours talking with 24 families to understand their school priorities and wrote: 12 Essential Questions Every Parent Should Consider For Schools In Ireland

Here, we outline our priorities. In this article, you will find:

  • our priorities of school factors

  • process to define our factor priorities

  • what makes a kid successful?

  • what makes our family succeed?

  • family values: do we assimilate or stick to roots

After hours of discussions with my wife, I spent 57 minutes writing this blog. You need 6 minutes to read this.

Young boy holding school admissions letter.
Young boy holding school admissions letter.

Related

Our Priorities Of School Factors

In descending order, we care about these factors:

  1. Language of Instruction

  2. Gender Mix

  3. Educational Reputation

  4. After-Care Availability

  5. School Cost

  6. After-Care Tie-Up/Pick-Up Options

  7. Stable and Well-To-Do Peer Group

  8. After-Care Timings

  9. Commute Time

  10. Facilities, Infrastructure, Playgrounds

  11. Student body diversity

  12. Religious Affiliation or Ethos

  13. Extracurricular Activities in After-Care

  14. Extracurricular Activities in School

  15. After-Care Cost

  16. Creche Friends

  17. Feeder to Secondary School

  18. Mode of Commute

  19. Class size

  20. School Uniform

  21. Food Provided in School

Understanding More Through The Below Sections

I shared our priority factors for choosing a school above. Below in the different sections I explain this and give frameworks.

Reasoning For Priorities Of School Factors

  • Language of Instruction: Our son is learning Marathi, Telugu, and English. We prefer an English-medium school to avoid the need to learn additional languages, like Irish or German, for academic success.

  • Gender Mix: Having grown up in co-educational environments, we believe in a gender-diverse school to mirror real-world social settings.

  • Educational Reputation: We want a school known for strong academics, positive outcomes, and quality teaching. In a Family Firm exercise, my wife and I independently discovered we hope for our son’s academic success.

  • After-Care Availability: We need after-care to ensure our work schedules remain uninterrupted, allowing us to focus on our careers instead of spending work hours in school pickups.

  • School Cost: We prefer a lower-cost primary school option. We prefer to keep the money for higher education, as free/low-cost primary schools in Ireland are great. We are more likely to pay for secondary school, undergrad, or higher degrees.

  • After-Care Tie-Up/Pick-Up Options: Ideally, the after-care would partner with the school and pick-up the kids from the school. This prevents us from having to manage additional logistics.

  • Stable Peer Group: We hope our son’s school has a steady peer group. If the students are from owned households instead of rental households, it will avoid frequent turnover due to families moving. This consistency would help maintain friendships without added effort from our family.

  • After-Care Timings: We need after-care to cover a full workday, ideally from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, rather than only partial hours.

  • Commute Time: A short commute—ideally 5-10 minutes—minimizes stress for our family. We do not want longer commutes, such as 25-30 minutes.

  • Facilities and Infrastructure: We want good facilities for our son’s overall development, including playgrounds. We want him in an environment that fosters growth.

  • Student body diversity: We want a student group where our Indian-origin son will feel accepted, not a homogenous school where he will stand out.

  • Religious Affiliation or Ethos: Most of our neighbors in Ireland are Christian, though we are not. We prefer a school where our religious differences won’t isolate our son.

  • Extracurricular Activities in After-Care: Structured extracurricular activities in after-care can prevent boredom. It also means we don’t need to interrupt our weekday working hours or weekend social/travel plans for drop-offs and pickups.

  • Extracurricular Activities in School: For holistic development, we want the school to offer activities like sports, music, or art. These can help our son find interests and connect with classmates. Our son will find it easier to find kids like him (homophily) with more activities.

  • After-Care Cost: While school cost was a deciding factor, after-care cost is less important. We want affordable options that don’t stretch our budget unnecessarily.

  • Creche Friends: Having friends from his current creche in school would ease our son’s transition. It’s not a high priority because I want to look to the future, not to the past for friendships.

  • Feeder to Secondary School: While many parents prioritize feeder schools, this is lower for us, as we are open to private secondary schools that may offer easier admission.

  • Mode of Commute: We prefer non-driving commute options like walking, biking, or a short bus ride, but given Irish weather, this is a low priority. It's very likely that we will need to drive.

  • Class Size: After hearing about this from a friend, we included class size as a consideration, though it’s not a high priority. Since there are limited school options (scarcity mindset), we’re focused on factors like cost, extracurriculars, convenience, and feeder alignment, which we feel will have a more significant impact on our son’s experience.

  • School Uniform: We appreciate the structure uniforms provide, reducing clothing disagreements with our son or economic disparity discussions amongst kids. However, we kept this a low priority after talking to an Irish friend who explained that even with uniforms, kids still find ways to express individuality.

  • Food Provided in School: Some schools offer hot meals, which could encourage healthier eating and reduce family effort. However, this is a lower priority for us.

Process To Define Our Factor Priorities

Thanks to Konrad for the illustration.

Divergent and Convergent steps in the ideation process.
Divergent and Convergent steps in the ideation process.
  1. My wife and I brainstormed factors, drawing from our experiences and other parents' feedback about school choices.

  2. My wife scored each factor on a scale of 1 to 200.

  3. I scored each factor the same way.

  4. We reviewed any factors with large score differences and discussed them.

  5. We combined our scores to create a ranked list of factors.

  6. We reviewed the ranked list to ensure each factor’s relative priority made sense.

Pen and paper exercise to understand our school priorities.
Pen and paper exercise to understand our school priorities.

Framework: Factors For Family And Kid Success

To determine the ranking factors, I considered:

  • What makes a/our kid successful?

  • What makes a/our family succeed?

What Makes A Kid Successful?

School environmental factors that make a kid succeed
School environmental factors that make a kid succeed

You might’ve thought about this - What makes a kid successful?

  • Nature?

  • Nurture?

  • Environment?

Based on the book The Nurture Assumption, I've realized “nature” is the most important factor, but I cannot change it. Going forward, I prioritized factors shaping my son's environment over factors that shape “nurture”.

Building long-term connections benefits adult life, but I chose not to focus on this for junior infants (5-7 year olds).

Environmental Factors for a Child’s Success:

  • Stable Peer Group

  • Quality of Teachers (Educational reputation)

  • Extracurricular Opportunities

So, I prioritized such factors in my ranking.

What Makes Our Family Succeed?

Inspired by The Family Firm by Emily Oster, I developed base principles for our family decisions. You can look at examples from our meal prep planning.

Our base principles for family decisions:

  • Save time

  • Save money

  • Minimize effort

While having good family time, fitness, friendships, and adventures.

family base principles
family base principles

Applying these to school selection factors:

  • Save time: Reduce commute.

  • Save time: Find and enroll in aftercare.

  • Save time: Ensure aftercare provides pickup from school.

  • Protect productive time: Opt for schools offering extracurriculars in aftercare or during school to protect working hours on weekdays.

  • Save money: Choose cost-effective schools and aftercare options.

  • Minimize efforts: Prioritize schools with stable, long-term peer groups (instead of transient peer groups) to foster friendships without extraneous effort.

  • Preserve Family Values: Consider the school's religious beliefs and ethos to align with our immigrant identity (avoid identity clash). More on this below.

Family Values: Do We Assimilate Or Stick To Roots

Reflecting on “family values” made me wonder: how important is our immigrant identity? To understand whether we chose to assimilate into our new culture or maintain our roots, I thought of past decisions.

  • Language (Roots): We only considered moving from India to countries like the U.S., UK, Ireland, or Australia, where we already know the language (English), versus learning a new language in (say) France or Germany.

  • Country (Assimilate): We did not stay in India to retain our roots. We moved abroad to experience a different culture.

  • Social Connections (Mix): We made friendships with locals through daycare, work, or community activities. We did not only stick to Indian immigrant circles. We've done a mix of both.

  • Dining Choices (Assimilate): Explore Indian restaurants or try cuisines from other countries? We’ve sampled over 52 different cuisines without physically traveling to those countries.

  • Clothing (Assimilate): Wear traditional Indian clothing or adapt to local styles? We've adjusted our wardrobe to reflect our new environment.

  • Neighborhood (Assimilate): Buy a home in an immigrant-friendly area, like Adamstown or Lucan, with a strong Indian community, or in a traditional Irish neighborhood?

  • Shopping (Assimilate): Visit Indian ethnic grocery stores for essentials or rely on Irish grocery stores like Tesco? We rely on Tesco and minimize relying on ethnic stories.

  • Cooking (mix): Cook traditional Indian dishes, Irish meals, or a mix? Our weekday meals are a blend, optimized for fitness rather than following a specific cuisine.

  • Education (TBD): Should we choose Irish Christian schools or secular Educate Together schools?

Take Action

We've identified 9 schools of interest. We will apply our priority framework to evaluate admission offers.

What other factors would you consider for schools?

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