Open days and admissions

I hope that by now we have covered all the key factors to think about when choosing a school. Some might be obvious but others require a lot more thought and you may be wrestling with a few dilemmas. How do you compare one school with another when they appear to offer something very similar?

The first thing to do is to start drawing up a shortlist. And this list needs to give a score or weighting based on your criteria. You may want to draw a series of columns and list each in turn. They can include: co-ed/single sex, the Head, pastoral care, extracurricular, inspection and financial due diligence, and of course, the logistics of the journey to/from school. Give each one a tick/cross or a score out of 10 from what you have been able to research. Fairly quickly, you will be able to discount some schools as not fitting your needs. Have a look at those headings again and see if there are any about which you are uncertain.

Of course, at this stage it might be hard to have particularly strong feelings about say the Head, unless you have met her or him already. That's where the visit – or Open Day – will come in but at this stage, all you are doing is working out what might, in theory, be an...