The influence that prep school heads have on parents’ choice of independent secondary schools may be greater than commonly imagined.
A 1993 MORI survey found that 24 per cent of parents used information from their child’s prep school when choosing a secondary. But Janet Harvey, the head of a small independent girls’ school in the Midlands, told the conference that 49 per cent of her school’s parents admitted that the prep was involved in their decision.
Janet Harvey, a post-graduate student at Loughborough University, suggested that prep school heads’ opinions of secondaries were formed by school visits and, crucially, by their relationships with the heads.
