Questions to Ask a Private School
Questions for families evaluating an independent or parochial school: grade size and attrition, faculty stability, the real annual cost, what support exists for a struggling student, and the terms of the enrollment contract.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How many students will be in my child's grade, and how many in the school overall?
Why ask it
Grade size decides the social world your child lives in, and small schools can have one crowded grade and one that barely fills a room. Ask about the grade above and below as well, since a thin cohort often means combined classes later.
How many students left last year, and from which grades?
Why ask it
Attrition is the number private schools track most closely and advertise least. Departures clustered at one grade usually mark a transition the school handles badly, and that is worth asking about directly.
How many teachers left last year, and how many have been here more than five years?
Why ask it
Independent schools often pay less than the local public system, so retention tells you whether people stay for the working conditions. High turnover in a small faculty also means your child may lose their strongest teacher between years.
Are you accredited, and when was your last review?
Why ask it
A checkable fact rather than a claim, and the accrediting body's report often lists the school's own identified weaknesses. Ask whether you can read the summary.
Who governs the school, and how are trustees chosen?
Why ask it
A board that renews itself by invitation behaves differently from one with elected parent seats or a religious body above it. Governance is what decides tuition increases and how a crisis gets handled.
What share of the budget comes from tuition?
Why ask it
A school covering nearly all costs from fees has little cushion if enrollment dips, which is how mid-year staff cuts and sudden mergers happen. Endowment income, giving, and reserves are the counterweight.
What does a full year actually cost, including everything that isn't tuition?
Why ask it
Registration, books, technology, uniform, trips, sports, instrument rental, lunch, transport, and the expected annual gift can add a substantial fraction to the headline figure. Ask for a typical total for a family in your child's grade.
How much financial aid do you award, to how many families, and is it reassessed every year?
Why ask it
The annual reassessment is the part families miss. An award that shrinks as your income recovers, against tuition that rises each year, can turn an affordable school into an unaffordable one by the third year.
What happens if our circumstances change mid-year?
Why ask it
Enrollment contracts usually commit you to the full year's tuition regardless, sometimes with insurance available. Ask what the school has actually done for families in that position, not only what the contract permits.
What happens here when a student starts to struggle academically?
Why ask it
Ask for the sequence and who initiates it. Small schools often provide excellent informal attention and no formal structure at all, which works until the teacher who was providing it leaves.
How do you support a diagnosed learning difference, and what can't you provide?
Why ask it
The second half is the part that decides things. Independent schools are generally not bound by the same obligations as public schools, so services such as speech therapy or a specialist teacher may simply not exist here.
Under what circumstances would you ask a student to leave, and how often has that happened in the last three years?
Why ask it
Private schools can decline to re-enroll a student, which parents rarely consider until it happens. A school that answers plainly, with a number and a reason, is one you can trust with a difficult year.
Who does college counselling, how many students do they carry, and when does it start?
Why ask it
A counsellor with sixty students writes different letters from one with two hundred. Ask when the first meeting happens, since a programme beginning in senior year is doing crisis management rather than planning.
What does an ordinary day look like, hour by hour?
Why ask it
Ask for a specific grade's real timetable rather than the general description. Where the day is short, or heavily broken up by chapel, assemblies, and transitions, the teaching time is less than the brochure implies.
How much homework would my child have on a normal weeknight?
Why ask it
Answers vary enormously between schools with similar reputations, and the school's answer and the parents' answer often differ by an hour. Ask both and believe the parents.
What's expected of parents in time and money beyond tuition?
Why ask it
Volunteering, committee work, auction attendance, and an annual fund ask are normal, and the social pressure around them is real. Better to know the expectation now than to discover it in November.
What has changed about who attends this school over the last five years?
Why ask it
Enrollment shifts explain a lot: a new feeder neighbourhood, a bigger aid programme, a religious identity loosening or tightening. It is also a gentler route to the question of who your child will be sitting beside.
Can my child spend a normal day in class here?
Why ask it
A shadow day tells you more than any tour, and most schools offer one. If they will only host on a designated visit day, ask why.
Why do families leave, and could I speak with one that did?
Why ask it
The first half will get you a fair answer more often than you expect: relocation, cost, a fit that did not work. The second half is a genuine test of confidence, and a school with nothing to hide sometimes says yes.
What isn't good enough here yet?
Why ask it
Every head of school has a list, since it is the substance of their job. Hearing a specific item, with what they are doing about it, is far more reassuring than a school that presents itself as finished.
Evaluating an Independent School
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
What to Do Before You Decide
Read the enrollment contract before the tour, not after acceptance
Ask the admissions office to send it early. The tuition refund terms, the re-enrollment deadline, the withdrawal date, and the school's right not to re-enroll a student are the commitments you are actually being asked to make.
Visit twice, once unscheduled if they allow it
The admissions morning is staged. A second visit at drop-off or pickup shows you how families and staff behave when nobody is presenting, and it is when parents will talk to you candidly in the car park.
Ask about the middle of the class
Schools talk about their strongest students because those stories are the easiest to tell. Ask what happens for a solid but unremarkable student, and for one who is behind, because that is where the school's real practice shows.
Look for the deferred maintenance
Roofs, boilers, and science labs are where a squeezed budget shows first. Combined with a high tuition dependence and recent leadership turnover, it is worth asking directly about the school's financial position.
Get the aid decision before you commit
Aid is normally decided after acceptance and on a different timetable. Ask for the dates in writing so you are not choosing between schools with one number missing.
Common Mistakes
Buying the reputation rather than the fit
A school that suits a self-directed reader may be a poor place for a child who needs structure, whatever its name is worth locally. Judge on the support your child specifically needs.
Budgeting on tuition alone
The extras and the annual increase are both predictable and both routinely left out of the family calculation. Model year three, not year one, before signing.
Assuming public school protections carry over
Entitlements around assessment, individualized plans, and services generally do not apply the same way in independent schools. If your child has or may need a plan, get the school's obligations in writing.
Only talking to the parents the school introduces you to
They are volunteers and enthusiasts, and their experience is real but selected. Find a family whose child had a hard year, and ask how the school behaved.
Letting your child's one-day impression decide it
A shadow day is valuable and it is also a single day with a friendly host. Weigh it alongside the attrition figures and the support structures rather than instead of them.
Sequences by Priority
If cost is the deciding factor
- 1"What does a full year cost including everything beyond tuition?"
- 2"How is aid reassessed each year?"
- 3"What has tuition risen by over the last five years?"
- 4"What happens if our circumstances change mid-year?"
If your child needs academic support
- 1"What happens when a student starts to struggle?"
- 2"How do you support a diagnosed learning difference, and what can't you provide?"
- 3"Under what circumstances would you ask a student to leave?"
- 4"Can my child spend a normal day in class?"
If you are weighing the school's stability
- 1"How many students and teachers left last year?"
- 2"What share of the budget comes from tuition?"
- 3"Who governs the school, and how are trustees chosen?"
- 4"What isn't good enough here yet?"