Considering a Change in NYC Schooling?
Dear Friends,
It goes without saying that COVID-19 is a chapter that has disrupted all aspects of our lives—everything from where and how we eat and work and communicate with our friends, to where and how our children are educated. No longer going to school outside our homes, they have been separated from their previous schooling environments and forced to visualize and create new methods and routines for learning.
While our old lives are on hold, we all have a chance to re-evaluate them and to make conscious decisions about how we want to re-construct them once we have the opportunity. Personally, I’ve been enjoying a slower pace and hope to maintain a greater degree of simplicity once I’m given the option of over-scheduling my life again. Maybe I’ll even continue to sleep a little later in the morning.
Some of the parents we speak with these days have been led by the current situation to re-evaluate their children’s education in general and how they want to it look in the future. The schooling environments they had signed up for and taken for granted now seem like a more distant concept, and life has forced them to recognize that enrollment in a given school isn’t necessarily forever. Indeed, the current situation has, in some instances, provided families with the impetus to break with their previous “normal” in a more permanent fashion and think about creating a new one.
At Bennett, we work with many families seeking admission at selective private schools in New York City and, while this work continues, we are currently seeing more families who are interested in taking a new path—relocating to the suburbs and benefitting from strong public school districts. There are undoubtedly many reasons for this trend, including a bubble of anxiety about urban life after the trauma of enduring lockdown at the virus’s US epicenter. Many families, however, find themselves questioning the value of private school education when it happens online, instead of in the traditional, intimate way that has long been its hallmark. And then there are those whose financial well-being has taken a beating and may not recover quickly.
As is always the case, new events are harbingers of new trends, and we are interested to watch where this one goes.
Take care,
The Bennett Team
As your Partner in Education, we at Bennett International remain able & ready to assist you. We have a dedicated team of researchers who are monitoring education-related updates around the world.
Please see our newly launched website dedicated to keeping you apprised of the effects of Covid-19 on worldwide education.
