ESSENTIAL FIRST STEPS IN CHOOSING AN INDEPENDENT SCHOOL

1. Start the process early; allow at least 18 months. This will ensure you have a good range of schools to choose from, plenty of time to visit and time to prepare for any entrance examinations.
   
   
2. Identify the type of educational environment that would best suit the needs of your child: day, boarding, guardian; single sex, co-educational, highly selective or a school for the all rounder.
   
   
3. Does your child have any special requirements: Dyslexia, supported learning, medical conditions?
   
   
4. Do you require the school to be in anywhere particular in the UK? Close to an airport, close to London, commutable distance.
   
   
5. Have copies of school reports available along with any English Language papers sat if English is not your child's first language.
   
   
6. Inform child's current school of your intentions; the Head teacher/Principal will normally be contacted to write a reference.
   
   
7. Be clear about if and when you are able to visit the schools selected. Do you want to visit on an open day or have a more personal tour? - Never rely simply on the shiny brochure or Ofsted report.
   
   
8. We advise families to visit five or six schools during term time rather than during the holidays. This way you get to see what the school is like on a day to day basis and you will also get a chance to speak to members of staff and current students.

CRYSTAL AWARDS FOR SCOTTISH SCHOOLS

Mr Michael Fanya, Academic Director of Education Advisers recently travelled to Scotland and visited the top five schools who achieved outstanding results in last year’s summer examinations. Below Mike recalls the details of his short trip…

First port of call was Strathallan School where I met Tessa Howard-Vyse (left), Director of Marketing and Development. It was good to catch up with Tessa and add another Crystal Award to go on the already full shelf in the school Common Room, marking another successful year as a Top Five Scottish School in A Level examinations.

On to Loretto and it was a great pleasure to meet new Headmaster Dr Graham Hawley. As well as having a fantastic Golf Academy Loretto is a Top Ten Scottish School by A Level results. I wish I had packed my clubs.....then again they all looked so professional perhaps it was just as well that I didn’t!

Fettes was on half-term holiday but Gemma Gray (right), Director of Marketing and PR very kindly met us to receive the award and then showed myself and my wife around the school, which included the hugely impressive new £10 million extension.

Moving on to St George’s Girls School, right next door to Murrayfield rugby stadium, which was getting ready for a visit from Wales. As Headmistress Mrs Everest was not available, senior teacher Sonia Edwards (left) received the award and also gave us lots of lively history about the school.

The final presentation was to Top Scottish A Level School Merchiston Castle and we had a very warm welcome from Deputy Head, Peter Hall, Registrar Phillip Rossiter, the Director of Studies as well as two Year 13 boys who have won places at Oxford University for entry in 2015. After the presentation the boys gave us a tour of the school, including the new sixth-form accommodation which really is 5*.

It was a privilege to visit such impressive and successful schools. We look forward to seeing them and others on our next trip.

THE EDUCATION ADVISERS CRYSTAL AWARDS

As you read this various Education Advisers members of staff are dashing round the country presenting Crystal Awards to Independent Schools for their 2014 exam results. We give every school in our tables a certificate, but most of those in our Top Ten positions also get a very smart crystal award, engraved with their academic achievements, so as we visit schools taking as many photographs as we can for our websites and blog, we must take a moment to congratulate all the schools on another year of terrific results!

Why do we compile 11 different league tables?

To tell you something about our League Tables, we started the process in 2007 and it was in direct response to the hundreds of requests from parents looking for rankings of schools.

We gradually subdivided the tables up into different curriculums - GCSEs, A Levels, IB , Highers and Scottish Highers - because we don't like converting one curriculum's grades to another using spurious formulae - the prime example being the UCAS conversion of IB DP points, so bad that even Universities ignore it! We also set our own ground rules for minimum size of cohort and minimum number of boarding pupils to qualify as a boarding school.

Some schools object to our tables and strangely it's mostly those schools which have not performed very well. We do make it crystal clear on our websites that nobody should choose a school on league table position alone. However, we do believe every parent has a right to know about a school's academic performance and also be impressed when a school wins one of our crystal awards.