Every year or so we survey our parents to determine why they were looking for a private school in the first place. I like playing around with stats (once in a while, mind you, not all the time) so I thought I’d share a few of the top reasons with you.
For today, I just want to focus on middle school’s numbers. We had 72 students enroll at the start of last year, and 28 families responded to the survey, for a 39% response rate.
One of the key questions we ask is “Why were you looking for a private school?” Our top five answers in the fall of 2010 were:
- Smaller classes – 67.9%
- Personal attention – 64.3%
- Better academics –57.1%
- College preparation – 39.3%
- This one’s a tie – “Closer supervision” and “To help student learn self-discipline” both came in at 35.7%.
Was any of this a surprise to us? No way. Smaller classes, better academics, and personal attention have consistently been in the top four reasons since 2004–not just for the middle school, but for the upper school as well.
I think we’re all a bit afraid of our kids getting lost in large classes. And especially at the middle school level, we want to make sure they’re getting the attention they need during the class day. We know our kids have potential, and as parents, we want to make sure they tap into it.
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