How to choose the right school, where your children can thrive

Forget top facilities and high rankings, this is what parents should really focus on when they are deciding what school they want their children to attend.

Parents should look past the “bells and whistles’’ of well-resourced schools and instead focus on behavioural standards if they want to give children a headstart on their career.

Choosing the right school can be a tough decision for families but researchers say that, all else being roughly equal, a school with good discipline will outperform a well-resourced one.

But they warn academic performance can also be undermined by the pursuit of perfection, urging young people to set “healthy high standards’’ that are more readily achieved.

Macquarie Business School researcher Dr Hana Krskova says that self-discipline is a teachable skill that transforms children into motivated, independent learners and later into responsible, capable workers.

Focus on discipline, not whether the school has the latest mod-cons, when considering what school to send your children to.

She says good discipline is easily recognisable during school tours – the school environment is generally quiet and teachers do not need to wait long for students to come into the classroom and settle into their learning once the bell rings.

“We’re not saying investment (to ensure schools are well-resourced) is not important, we’re just presenting the evidence that discipline plays a bigger part (in the future success of students),’’ Krskova says.

“Good discipline is preferable to the bells and whistles.

“Schoolchildren can’t grow up to take the bells and whistles with them into the workforce … but, if they don’t learn the discipline needed to focus then their academic performance is not going to be as high and that will affect them (later) at work.’’

Krskova says subsequent interviews with university students had identified focus, responsibility, having clear goals to follow, creating a structure to achieve study goals and managing time to complete tasks were key to academic and future careers success.

Meanwhile, research by Flinders University clinical PhD candidate Ivana Osenk has found striving for perfection has a detrimental effect on study performance, leading to academic burnout, test anxiety and procrastination, as well as lower engagement and satisfaction levels and poorer learning strategies.

In contrast, having high standards improved academic performance and protected against negative outcomes such as stress and procrastination.

“Some of the articles we examined found striving for perfection may be helpful but we don’t agree with that as a blanket statement,’’ Osenk says.

“Perfectionism makes young people aim for rigid goals and sets them up to fear failure, to fear making mistakes and taking risks in their learning and to be self-critical when perfection isn’t attained.

“We need to encourage students to strive to be the best they can be rather than wanting to be ‘the best’ and chasing an unattainable ideal.

“One is healthy and helps high achievement.

“The other can be toxic to both academic outcomes and students’ mental health.’’

Originally published as How to choose the right school, where your children can thrive