Custom «Report Plan: Public Schools versus Private Schools» Essay Paper Sample

1. Introduction

The target audience for this report will be potential parents looking to enroll their child in a school. It means that they need an objective evaluation of the available options in order to make the right choice. The report will be aimed at convincing the parent that a public school is a better choice for their child than a private school, and as such the report will need a number of sources to support the claim. These may include the fee structures, school programs and SAT mean scores of the public and private schools in question. Other than just the cost of sending a child to either a public or private school, there are a number of other factors that matter and it will be used as the criteria to evaluate the two school categories.

2. Criteria

a. Academic Curriculum

Parents are interested in the quality of education that their children obtain, and as such the academic curriculum is a very important aspect in choosing a school. As such, the report will provide information on the curricula followed by both the private and the public schools. To do this, the report will have to incorporate summarized copies of the schools’ curricula for the parents to examine for themselves. Generally, public schools have higher standards for their academic curricula than the private schools, not forgetting that they also offer the students a wider variety of elective classes to choose from.  

b. Extra Curricula Activities

In most cases, these are the non-examinable activities that build the child’s character and personality outside the classroom setting. While most parents focus on the performance of their children in the classroom, they also acknowledge the importance of extra curricula activities like soccer, guitar and flamenco among others. The public schools often offer these activities at no extra costs as opposed to the private schools where these programs are not always available depending on the number of parents willing to pay extra money for non-academic services. 

c. Meals

Healthy foods are every parent’s concern whenever they send their children out to school. That is why when they can they often opt to pack lunch for their young ones. Other than simply considering the cost of meals in schools, they are also very conscious about the quality of the menu in terms of healthy options. Public schools are more sensitive to the health concerns of the parents and children as opposed to private schools that often aim at pleasing the children with junk foods and unhealthy options. With an affordable price tag, the meal programs at public schools are likely to draw in more parents than the private schools, and thus this information will be used in the report. 

3. Extra Costs

a. Books

Taking into account the fact that text books are often considered school property, parents would generally expect the schools to provide them for their children except for special circumstances. Private schools however charge a very steep annual fee for these books unlike the public schools that avail them for free. The same applies for the extra curricula activities which come at a relatively cheap price.

b. Transport and After Care Services

While both private and public schools offer transportation and aftercare services, it is important for the parents to consider how much they will be charged for them. Aftercare services allow the students to stay at school after classes, which is often between 2.00pm and 6.00pm. It means that the parents do not have to worry about the whereabouts of their children while they are still at work. Transportation ,on the other hand, allows children to get home without the parents having to pick them up. Both services in this case provide some level of convenience but the parents must be able to afford the associated costs. As such, the report will highlight the steep differences in the charges for these services in the private and public schools.    

4. Methods

The report will use fee structures as provided by a number of public and private schools, as well as their school programs availed to the parents at the beginning of each school year. The idea is to be accurate and objective as possible and thus the data must be original as obtained from the schools that will be sampled.

5. Conclusion

The report in question is addressed to a potential parent, Lida Sourrender who is a mother of three children and trying to decide on whether to take them to a public or private school. The report is focused on highlighting the benefits of the public schools over the private schools based on the quality and thoroughness of the curricula and the efficiency of the costs among other things. Basically, the report evaluates the pros and cons of public schools versus private schools in order to establish that public schools are far much better than the private schools. The data will then be evaluated for cost-benefit ratios in order to determine which of the two categories is better than the other. The idea is to have a fairly rational comparison such that the audience does not feel manipulated through a biased evaluation. To accomplish this, the report will have to use the same criterion for both school categories and these will be quality of curricula, variety of extra curricula activities, available feeding programs and costs.