All parents worry about how their children are doing at school. From the day they start, we’re panicking about them making friends or not knowing where the toilets are, right up to their last days when we are wondering how best to help them prepare for their exams and lives after school. The best thing you can do is find ways to help them to succeed.

Prepare Them

The two biggest events in your child’s schooling are starting primary school and starting senior school. These are very different challenges and they happen seven years apart, but both will fill you and your child with dread and excitement. Preparing your child for these big changes will help them to settle easily, make new friends, and feel comfortable in their new settings. While there is a lot you can do at home to prepare them, the best thing you can do to make this transition as easy as possible is sending them to a fantastic nursery school and then a top prep school. If you are looking for an independent prep school  is a great option.

Talk to Them

Your child will have to overcome many challenges during their schooling. These could include issues with teachers, bullying, struggling with work, feeling frightened or upset, not liking the food, and many other things. It’s important to your child’s success that they know they can talk to you about any issues they may have. To encourage this, ask questions about their day and tell them about your own school days, including any problems you may have had.

Read with Them

Reading is one of the best things you can do for your child’s education. Start reading to them at a very early age. Take them to libraries, introduce them to different books and then, as they get older, listen as they read to you and encourage them to have quiet time reading on their own. A love of reading can stay with children for life, helping to build their imaginations, creativity, concentration span and love of words. Reading with children has many benefits and is a way to spend some nice, quiet time together at the end of the day.

Be Involved

Chat with their teachers, get involved with any school trips and visits, offer your help, go in to see shows and events and generally be involved in school activities. This will send the message to your child that you love their school and want to be a part of it. It may also led them to studying for biology and other  field in which they may  find and nurture their passion. 

Encourage a Love of Learning

Reading goes a long way towards instilling a love of learning in your child. But, you can do more by playing educational games, crafting, visiting museums, and helping them with projects and homework.

Feeling anxious about your child’s development and progression is only normal. All parents worry when their child starts a new class or receives exam results. However, knowing you have done your best to help them will help you to feel calm and enjoy their school years, while also helping them to become the best they can possibly be.

Free schools are becoming increasingly popular in the UK. With the success of academies evident, free schools are the new equivalent. While academies are established comprehensive schools which have been transformed into self-run academies taken out of the control of the local authority, free schools are brand new and often operate in community spaces or entirely new buildings. This is all well and good, but of course this means that if you are part of a group setting up a free school, you will need to know how to set up your classrooms.

If it’s a brand new school, you’ll need to make sure you set a good first impression, so while you don’t need to opt for expensive classroom furniture, you should opt for pieces which offer good value for money. Buying in bulk usually means you can negotiate a discount, so approach a good classroom furniture stockist and explain what you need to see if they can offer you a reduced price for a large order.

Firstly, you need to figure out the number of pupils you are expecting. Once all your applications are in and you have the final number of accepted places, you can figure out your class sizes and how many rooms you will need. If you haven’t already found a suitable space, do so now you have the exact figures prepared. This way, you can figure out a layout for your classroom based on the amount of furniture.

Once you know how much you will need, choose some suitable desks based on the age of the pupils. Very young pupils will need the smallest desks, whereas the older year groups will be fine with full-sized furniture. You also need to buy enough chairs for all of the pupils, along with spares in case you have visitors or parents coming in to help. The teachers may need bigger chairs, so make sure you factor these into your furniture order.

When it comes to storage, there are two things to think about: storage for resources and storage for the children’s belongings. For resources, cupboards and drawers should suffice, or if you have a separate storage cupboard outside the classroom or built into a wall this is even better as it keeps the clutter out. For children, there are a few methods you can use: under-desk drawers where they can keep their notebooks and pencil cases if they sit in the same place all the time, a single set of drawers with one for each child or lockers for older children for sports kits and more expensive equipment.

If you will have computers in the classroom, remember you will need extra desks and chairs for this. Some desks come with holes built in through which you can thread the wires to keep them tidy and out of the way, so you may want to consider this. Other specialist furniture can include science desks, which include gas taps and power points for experiments, and art and technology desks, which tend to be made from durable wood and are easy to clean.

Carla Tyldesley is fanatical about the free school concept and is looking forward to a boom in the scene