How do I choose a UK school for my daughters?

Q. We are currently living in the Netherlands but are hoping to move back to the UK. We have 3 daughters – the eldest about to start year 7. How do we even begin to find a school? We have no ties to any particular area though interested in the South West. She is a very bright girl with great levels and has been in the G & T programme at the British School here, but we are looking to give her more of a challenge. She quite fancies weekly boarding. Any advice?

A. There are a number of articles here on MyDaughter to get you started:
Choosing a secondary school – for advice on UK Key stage 2 education and secondary schools”
Modern Boarding – a group of articles on all aspects of boarding today.
Why choose a girls’ school – information and advice on single-sex education.

When it comes to choosing a particular school try the MyDaughter School’s directory which provides the facility to view a list of the independent girls’ schools in your chosen town or wider region, and to filter by school type (day or day/boarding). Click through to a particular school for an overview of what the school can offer and then click directly through to each school’s own web-site for further information and detail.

Also try the website of the ISC (Independent Schools’ Council), which represents 1,260 independent schools in the UK – www.isc.co.uk. Via the School Search section you can narrow down your choices by selecting details such as type of school, geographical location, boarding or day, etc, which you should find helps you tremendously.

Depending on when you plan to return to the UK, you should probably start looking in earnest now – in the autumn, schools will be starting the process of allocating places for September 2011, and you will need to register as soon as possible.