My name is Egor Eremeev, I am a co-founder of Smapse Education, and over 17 years of work I have visited more than a hundred schools around the world — visited in person, not just looked at photos on a website. I'm often asked: why spend so much time? After all, there are rankings, presentations, websites, open house days. Isn't that enough?
For me, the answer is simple: a website shows a school on its best day, while a child will live in it during ordinary weekdays. So when I visit an educational institution, I'm interested in far more than just what the school wants to show potential clients — there are methods that allow you to understand the real picture much faster.
Go to the “non-public” places
At an open house, guests will most likely be offered a look at the new gym, a modern laboratory, or other spaces the school is especially proud of. I, on the other hand, ask to see the dormitories, the dining hall during a regular lunch, or the locker rooms in that same gym. Not because I'm difficult and want to go looking for flaws on purpose — it's simply that this is where a child will spend a significant part of their school years. They're unlikely to sit every day in the laboratory that gets photographed for the homepage, but they will constantly walk into the dorm room and the dining hall.
Even small details, like the smell in the dormitory, tell you more about a school than the director's presentation does. Is it clear that the premises are looked after regularly, or have some problems gone unaddressed for months? Things like that are hard to “package” nicely for a website — and practically impossible to prepare specially for the arrival of every single guest.
Watch the children
There's another indicator that can't be fit into a glossy brochure — the behavior of the students themselves. While the director or a staff member is giving the tour, I'm not watching them; I'm watching the children. How do they react to adults? Do they greet them calmly and warmly, looking them in the eye, or do they try to hurry past, avert their gaze, hug the wall?
Children don't know how to keep up a pretty picture the way adults and websites do, so sometimes a few minutes are enough to feel the atmosphere of a school. It's not a formal indicator, but it's exactly this kind of observation that builds up an understanding of what a school is really like.
Ask uncomfortable questions
There's a question I particularly like to ask the administration: “How many children left over the past year, and why?” A good school can answer it specifically — give a number and explain the reasons, objectively and calmly. But if, instead of an answer, you start getting talk about “individual circumstances” and attempts to dodge specifics, that's already a warning sign.
Why I stopped looking at rankings
Rankings are convenient, there's no arguing with that. They're full of numbers, rankings laid out, clear criteria set — it seems like all you need to do is find a school higher up the list, and the question of choice is solved!
However, after many trips, I started to see them differently. A ranking assesses what can be measured: exam results, the percentage of graduates admitted to universities, the teacher-to-student ratio, and so on. But it doesn't answer the question that matters most to a family: will this particular school suit this particular child?
I've seen schools from the top of the rankings where an anxious straight-A student would have a hard time — an intense race for results doesn't suit everyone; not everyone has such steady ambition and motivation. At the same time, I've gotten to know schools that were formally lower in the rankings, but where a child with that kind of character could flourish far better: the teachers know how to find an approach to each student, to encourage gently, in a freer atmosphere.
A ranking answers one question: how good is the school overall according to a certain set of criteria. But a parent needs a completely different answer: how good will this particular school be for this particular child.
Yes, traveling myself is hard, but I still do it
Many years of flights mean jet lag, strain on your health, and a huge amount of time that could probably be used differently. Competitors can quite calmly work from catalogs, photographs, and information from open sources. Also from a rational standpoint, the question of whether it's worth constantly traveling in person really does remain debatable.
For me, though, the answer here is unambiguous. I can't advise a family to spend such-and-such an amount and send a child for several years to a school I myself have never set foot in. I feel far more at ease when a recommendation rests not only on someone else's presentation and nice photos, but on my own experience — when I myself have stood in that dining hall on an ordinary Tuesday, seen the dormitory on a day that wasn't an open house, talked to people, watched the children.
So I keep traveling — not for the number of countries visited and not for nice shots, but because choosing a school based on the “storefront” alone is too serious a bet to make when it concerns several years of a child's life.
