View source for The Essential Guide to Your Prep School Journey (Head Teacher in Your Pocket) by Merinda D'Aprano

{{infobox1 
|title=The Essential Guide to Your Prep School Journey (Head Teacher in Your Pocket)
|sort=Essential Guide to Your Prep School Journey (Head Teacher in Your Pocket)
|author=Merinda D'Aprano
|reviewer=Jill Murphy
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=Extremely good advice for anyone considering this type of schooling.
|rating=4.5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=152
|publisher=Merinda D'Aprano
|website=
|date=February 2016
|isbn=0993550304 
|cover=0993550304
|aznuk=0993550304
|aznus=0993550304
}}
As you might have gathered from the title, ''The Essential Guide to Your Prep School Journey'' is pitched at parents who intend on using the private sector to educate their children. And clearly, these are the parents who will benefit most from reading the book. However, there is a great deal of general advice within its pages which will prove helpful even to parents whose children will be travelling through the state sector. So if this is you, don't discount this book immediately. Such advice includes ''Why is reading so important?'', ''How can I promote a brave learner?'' and ''Is the internet safe for my child?'' - you can see that these are universally applicable topics and topics that all parents appreciate advice about. 

And the advice is clearly given, full of both specific understanding of education and children, and genuine and clear-sighted common sense. Very early on, D'Aprano speaks about "helicopter", "tiger" and "snowplough" pushy parenting and warns readers that, however well-meaning, such parenting styles work against children more than for them.I was greatly heartened to see this so clearly pointed out early on in the book because I agree wholeheartedly. And the rest of the book carries on in this sensibly ambitious vein. We all want our children to do well according to the standards of their peers and also to achieve their full potential. We don't always see that ''minimising risk and hiding from failure'', as D'Aprano so wisely puts it, won't achieve that.

There is too much here to precis but suffice it to say that every aspect of choosing and supporting education for your primary age children is discussed in ''The Essential Guide to Your Prep School Journey''. D'Aprano has a long career as an educationalist and has been an ISI inspector as well as a headteacher. And her advice is supplemented by parenting specialist Elizabeth O'Shea, who adds background on managing children's behaviour and promoting educational success through stability at home.

This little book is like a Tardis of information and advice and is a must for parents considering a prep school education for their children, from the initial stages of choosing a school and what to look for to supporting them once they're there. It also has something of value to offer parents of children at state schools. It's written with great clarity and also a deep understanding of the topic.

Recommended.

You might also want to look at [[School Daze: Searching for a Decent State Education by Andrew Penman ]], which looks at the system from a state-funded point of view.

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