What is your views on boarding school, did you are you children attend or would you consider sending children to boarding school. I had family who went to boarding school and they hated it had a long term affect on them as well. I think you can have a good enough education at day school! Do parents do it for the sake of the kids are themselves!
Lottie, the youngsters I was at school with had a good time, we were mixed day and boarding until I was 11, their lives were certainly better than if they had been with parents who travelled and meant they would be hopping from school to school and not having consistent schooling. Some were homesick at first but the staff were good at helping with that. Oscarina says it's class-related, yes you have to be able to afford it but there was no snobbiness at my school, it's just a different way of life for boarders. I would rather have been secure in boarding school than in the peripatetic way of life experienced by some of the parents of my fellow pupils. Eash to their own.
If I'd had children, I think I would have let them board.
I have tricky one with a pal's daughter. She's my goddaughter. I paid for her to go to prep school. She moves on to "big school" in September. I've told them I'd like to carry on paying her fees, including boarding fees if she boards.
She is desperate to board. The parents are not so sure.
My son boarded from age 11 boxtops. Our local school is very insular in a small country town and the school he went to was only 30 miles away but has a great reputation for music and he is musically talented. It caters for loads of people from all walks of life and there are plenty of kids from overseas as well. He looked round the local school but decided on the boarding school and loved every minute of it. He came home every three weeks for a weekend, but always loved going back. I reckon he had more fun there than he would have done living at home. They certainly got up to a lot of mischief!! They were such confident kids and so supportive of each other too, and being in mixed age and mixed sex boarding houses was like being in one huge family!!
I have a friend who went to, I think, Winchester. Said he didn't mind the school at all but what he hated was the holidays. His parents were diplomats and always abroad, and so holidays always meant a whole raft of jabs and medicals before he went.
He's certainly not toffee-nosed in any way. Yes, he's well spoken, but other than that he's a great bloke - liberal, open-minded, calm and quietly confident. A good advert for the private/public system if you ask me.
If i could afford it, I would send mine to a priate school. If that school happened to be a boarding one, then so be it.
I see the local chavs and chaettes on their way home from school, and my heart breaks to think my princess might soon be joining them if I dont buck my ideas up and move to a nicer area.
My husband went to boarding school from the age of seven and he (I feel) is still a bit screwed up by it. I would want my children to go to the best possible school (which, dependant upon where you live, is not necessarily a fee paying school) but I would never send them to boarding school.