If you’re going to shell out thousands of dollars for private school for your kids, you should be able to expect a few benefits. A private school education must be able to outcompete public schools by a lot, offering opportunities and challenges that enhance the educational experience. When you’re shopping for private schools in your area, you’ll want to check off a few items to make sure the switch to private is worth it. Here are the top items to watch for:
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Opportunities for Creativity and Imagination
Often overlooked as a critical aspect of education is the opportunity to be creative and use your imagination. Many parents, teachers, and administrators will argue that students need to focus on STEM subjects and perform well on tests. While that may be true, a lack of arts and humanities both remove a lot of joy from learning and have an impact on performance in STEM subjects as well.
A truly innovative and progressive educational institution will provide a variety of ways for kids to express their creativity and use their imaginations. From offering the right playground equipment for schools to coordinating collaborative experiences in the classroom, private schools should focus on making learning fun. This approach to learning can make all the subjects kids learn in school more interesting, which helps kids retain the information better.
An Engaging Learning Environment
Speaking of making learning fun and engaging, the classroom in private school must be one that fosters genuine curiosity and interest in the subject material. It’s not easy to teach a subject in an interesting way, and many teachers are ill-equipped and undereducated in their subjects. For this reason, many classrooms are arranged with desks in a row, teachers standing in the front, and worksheets passed back while a teacher lectures.
This approach may be sufficient for certain subjects at the university level in a lecture hall. But for primary and secondary schools, kids need to be engaged. So your private school should have a classroom with a more open feel, with desks arranged in groups or in a circle, and with smaller classroom sizes. The goals should be for kids to interact with each other and with the teacher on the topics at hand, and have a good time while doing so.
Community
This classroom arrangement also allows for a sense of community. Too many public schools, and even homeschooling situations, isolate kids and keep them segregated and lonely. This environment can breed resentment, a lack of interest in learning, and a failure to thrive educationally. To make matters worse, underprepared and inexperienced teachers are often at a loss to make any real change and grow community in the classroom or on campus.
A private school should offer this sense of community to students, faculty, and parents. This could look like mixed-age learning environments, where older kids mentor younger kids, and younger kids share ideas and are encouraged to help each other. The school could also include a teacher’s aide or assistant in every classroom to help kids when the teacher is busy. You might also see parent/teacher mixers and regular festivals and gatherings to form and grow connections.
Access to Resources
Another benefit that should be standard in any private school is access to resources. Sadly, many U.S. schools are underfunded and are unable to offer kids access to modern technology, innovative research, and state-of-the-art facilities, like labs. Especially as kids enter middle school and high school, they’ll need to be able to use these types of resources to advance their interests in STEM subjects and even digital forms and electronic aspects of the arts.
A top-quality private school will be able to give you a tour through these types of facilities. Every student should have access to new computer equipment with software that can meet their educational needs. Science labs should be modernized and offer opportunities for kids to challenge what they think they know. And art, music, and literature should be enhanced by functional theaters, computer equipment, and sound rooms that showcase innovations in those fields.
Educational Guidance
Finally, many kids in public school have little to no guidance as they go through their educational journey and start thinking about their future career prospects. Without clear guidance, bright young minds can get lost in the shuffle and end up losing their love of learning. Kids who might have gone on to become brilliant surgeons or top auto mechanics could lose track of their education without proper guidance.
It may be too soon for a kid in elementary school to think about a future career. But a counselor should still discuss their grades, their interests, and their passions. By middle and high school, there should be regular check-ins with an advisor who’s tracking their progress and their engagement. As kids move closer to graduation, the child, the teacher, and the counselor should all be on the same page about what will happen — whether it’s starting college, trade school, or a gap year.
Honestly, these benefits are those that should be available to all kids in school, regardless of age or income. Unfortunately, public schools simply don’t have the funding or the access to resources to provide them. But private schools, with the thousands of dollars they earn from student tuition each year, must be able to make learning fun, track student progress and engagement, and provide real, helpful guidance as kids prepare for adulthood.