Best School for my child

‘Which is the best school for my child?’ is the most intriguing question for every parent. As an educator and parent I strongly believe that there is nothing called the ‘best’ school. Every school is good in its own way, for it aims to implement its best practices. While the word ‘best’ is very subjective, I would say that there are times when the real scenarios show that though schools talk of their best practices, they fail to adopt and implement in practice. Hence, the discrepancy is between preach and practice, aim and adopt. 

If every school adopts what it aims, I guess parents would no longer have to scout with the question-’ which is the best school of the lot’? True that talking about mission and vision, learning practices through a flashy website- is a feel good factor and source of confidence for parents, but what is really meaningful is the experience of children and parents once they become a part of the integrated learning ecosystem of a specific school. 

I have often come across cases where the mission, vision, philosophy, and learning environment is asynchronous with the standards and practices of a progressive curriculum. A progressive curriculum may have its learning aims and objectives, assessment criteria very distinctively mentioned; however when it comes to the adoption and implementation of the modern learning and pedagogy of the curriculum in an organizational learning ecosystem- you get to see rifts, discrepancies, and lack of symmetry. This discrepancy is solely due to the fact that a couple of schools might have a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset and hence fail to manifest the pedagogical practices to the most successful outcome. 

Ergo, my suggestions and guidelines to the parent community is-’ Get empowered to ask the most realistic questions to the school stakeholders, rather than some bookish jargon’. 

Herein, I feel good to share that a couple of schools namely The Bangalore School (TBS) in Whitefield, The Green School Bangalore, Sarjapur (TGSB) have proved to do justice to all the most valid questions-the BIG questions which I often name as the ‘Empowering ones’. The FAQs you ask should focus on how a school is implementing say ‘a student led inquiry’ or ‘a collaborative learning model’ in and beyond the classroom.  I appreciate TBS and TGSB for upholding a very meaningful mission and learning philosophy of ensuring sustainability of the environment through their proprietary learning model, making education accessible to all the self-regulated learners through the adoption of what is called an ‘inclusive’ classroom in a true sense.