Choosing a school
Find the right primary or secondary school for your child's education
No doubt one of the most important decisions you will make in
your child's education will be choosing a primary or secondary school.
Making the right choice for you and your child will involve a lot of research
and planning. This section is designed to help you get started.
To help you find information about a school in England near you, an improved search tool for finding and researching schools, childcare and nurseries has been launched.
The new service - which now also provides Ofsted reports, maps and achievement tables - will soon be fully available on ParentsCentre. In the meantime, you can find it on the Parents section of Directgov. As this is an external website, the link below will open in a new window which you will need to close to return to ParentsCentre.
Search for schools, childcare and
nurseries
[External Site]
If you are looking for information about schools in Scotland, Parentzone
[External Site] is a comprehensive
resource. If you want to know about education in Wales, the Welsh Assembly's
website
[External Site] is full of useful information.
Related Links:
Every Parent Matters: your local school system
Find primary or secondary school Achievement and Attainment
Tables
[External Site]
Discuss issues with other parents in the 'Education and Learning'
[External Site]
section of the
ParentsCentre forum
The Choosing a school section includes:
Admissions and applications
When and how to apply
Who handles admissions
Admissions to primary school
Admission authorities
Finding
the right school
Visiting schools
Obtaining LA booklets
Obtaining school prospectuses
Achievement and Attainment Tables
Choosing where to study at 16+
Researching local learning providers
Talking to career advisors
Visiting learning providers
Official inspection reports
Local
authorities (LAs)
What local authorities do
Access to the LA gateway
Education Development Plans (EDP)
LEAs handling school admissions
School
choice: your rights
Your and your child's basic rights
When your child is not offered a
place
Legal class limits and oversubscription
Admissions criteria, coordinated admissions
School
performance
Achievement and Attainment Tables
Ofsted inspection reports
Beacon schools
Education action zones (EAZs)
Types of
school
The framework for schools
Early years schools
State, independent and boarding schools
Northern Ireland and Scotland
Schools that can select pupils
Partially selective schools
Grammar and comprehensive schools
Information about banding
The 1998 School Standards and Framework Act
Specialist schools
The Specialist Schools Programme
Arts, businness and enterprise, engineering
Humanities, language, mathematics and computing
Music, science, sport, technology
Education Action Zones (EAZs)
Definition of EAZs
Funding for EAZs
Current zones
Excellence in Cities (EiC)
Excellence in Cities (EiC)
About the Government scheme
Excellence clusters
