Does it always pay to switch?

When Isobel Walters guides parents through the process of switching a child’s school, she speaks from first-hand experience. In the 1990s she stayed at her first independent senior school for only eight weeks before changing to another. ‘The second school was just as academic, but it focused a lot more on sport,’ she says. ‘I started on the sport, and I was away — the move worked well.’

Walters, who runs IW Schooling Consultants, has used her own life lesson to advise clients. She quotes a recent example of a girl who came from abroad to study at a girls’ boarding school in a London suburb, only to find that, having grown up in the countryside, she did not fit in with town girls who were keener on shopping than riding. ‘Within three or four weeks the parents had decided she wasn’t happy,’ Walters says. ‘We all worked together through that first term — the parents, the school and I — trying to find ways to make her more comfortable.