Selecting the right school for your child can be a daunting task, but these top tips will help you get started.

There are so many unknown factors which can affect the decision of which secondary school to choose.

The examination results might seem to give a clear guide to a school's quality and, indeed, parents ought to ask for results when they visit. But the results depend upon the entry policy of the school.

A school that is highly selective and takes in only academic pupils should have better results than one with a policy which enables it to take almost all pupils who apply.

A boy or girl may do better with the encouragement of feeling successful in a non-selective school than struggling at the bottom of a highly academic one.

So, what is the parent to do? The first thing is to draw up a list of possibles.

Schools will be happy to send out prospectuses; careful reading of these will reveal differences in style and emphasis which may help to narrow the list of schools to visit.

However clear the choice may then seem, it is worth visiting more than one school in order to provide comparisons.

It is important to visit in term time and when the school is actually working, though this may be more difficult for large day schools to organise - these often have to rely upon open days and evenings. Then draw up a list of questions to ask.

When you visit, steel yourself to ask the questions that matter to you and make sure you get an answer you are satisfied with.

The visits themselves will reveal just how different schools are.

In many ways the process of choosing a school is not dissimilar to that of choosing a house: atmosphere comes over very quickly and parents can soon tell something about the products of the school, the pupils, as they are met in classrooms and corridors.

It is possible also to pick up something about the relationship between staff and pupils and between the pupils themselves.

Parents will be able to see the size of classes and to get a feel for the discipline and level of formality in the school.

Junior and preparatory schools will be happy to supply a list of the schools to which their pupils have moved.

Some schools may also be using national tests and may have the results available.

Senior schools will supply GCSE and A-level results. It is useful to get a list of where pupils have gone after leaving and schools should supply these.

Again, it is important to remember that results depend in part upon entry policy.

It will be surprising if a visit does not leave parents with a clear idea as to whether a school is going to be right or not. If questions remain, it is important to ask them of the school.

The views of other parents are sometimes helpful, but different parents look for and expect different things and a glowing report from a parent may not mean that a school is right for all children; equally, the fact that one parent is unhappy does not mean that the school is not the right one for other pupils.