In our previous blog post, we talked about what is age of school and what are the 3 ways to look at it. Let us now take one at reasons why you should prefer an older, more established schools over new ones. We see there are 5 reasons for preferring older schools over newer ones.
Older schools have strong cultures, traditions and systems
As schools grow older, they develop cultures, traditions and systems that invoke pride amongst older students and facilitate path for present students. Traditions could be academic, cultural or political. Some schools have a tradition of sending their students to high ranks in Army while others produce great political leaders. There are still other schools that have a tradition of getting 10% of their class in IITs every year. Now, I completely acknowledge that it is a lot of personal effort by the student too BUT school and the environment plays a big role too. The tradition and culture makes sure that the student is aware of IITs well in time. They know what does it take to reach there and what are the various avenues to seek help, including past students. These traditions play a huge role in influencing our choices for the future. Older schools, due to their age, are more likely to have such traditions than newer schools.
Older schools likely to be more prestigious
More established or older schools will more often than not be more prestigious of the institutions in the city. If mentioning your school or college name is enough to ring a bell then you know what we are talking about. It is like mentioning Mayo College, St. Xavier's and so on. You do not need to go in a whole lot of detail about these institutions. They have an aura and prestige due to their long presence.
Older schools likely to have better infrastructure
Schools require heavy infrastructure to ensure the overall development of the student, e.g. well maintained sports fields, sports equipments, a well stocked library with diverse books, auditoriums etc. This infrastructure requires some serious investment. Simply given the time at hand, older schools are likely to have a better infrastructure than newer schools because over the years, their fee income, donations from public bodies and old students accumulate and give them an ability to invest in building facilities that new schools will find difficult to match immediately.
Older schools have a higher ability to attract talent
Schools, like companies, improve their ability to attract talent as they grow older. Most of us would prefer to work for a more established company rather than an upstart for a variety of reasons. Same is true for teachers. More experienced teachers are more likely to prefer an older school than a new one. Same is for the support staff. Given limited supply of qualified teachers, we know who has a better chance of attracting the talent
Older schools likely to have strong PTA and alumni network
Over the years, schools form strong PTA and Alumni network. The strength of these networks is directly proportional to the number of members it has, which depends upon how many students have graduated through the school over the years. Stronger alumni and PTA networks means your ability to tap in to these for advice or help is vastly higher for an older school than for a newer school, which completely lacks this.
To be completely transparent, we know that newer schools have some benefits too. In our next article in this series we will talk about 5 benefits of choosing a newer school over an older one. We hope combined, these 3 posts will help you make an aware choice.
If you liked this post, you can subscribe to us through email to stay updated. You can also join us on facebook and twitter to stay in the loop and interact with other parents.