Sidcot School..opinions please!

[brightandbeauiful]

DS wants to return to the UK to board for sixth form. We are currently living and working in a developing world country and he will do iGCSEs in 2017.

I think he has a good temperament /maturity for boarding, and in fact, he suggested it. His interests are arts, music and outdoorsy (D of E) stuff.

Academically he's solid-good, I guess he'll get A/ A's and B's next year, but not a long string of A's.

One school which looks interesting is Sidcot - we were really impressed with another Quaker school we looked at several years ago in Yorkshire, and our family are in Wales/West Country, so that would be a good fit, with us the other side of the world!

The Christian/Quaker ethos is fine by us, but I'd be interested to know how that plays out in school life.

I'd be very interested in anyone's experience of joining to school to board at 16+, the proportion of pupils who board for sixth form,and also your opinions generally, thanks!

[happygardening]

My FIL who is 90+ went there he hated it, but seriously it's not known to be overly academic but standards of pastoral care are said to excellent.
You've posted about a few schools, as I said on previous thread if your looking for full boarding do check the actual number of full boarders, schools that are not full boarding only schools lie are reluctant to divulge the numbers because they want your money, ISI reports definition of full boarding includes weekly boarders. Don't forget the number of people with 36k+ that they can throw at school fees is very small, most UK based parents don't want full boarding anymore only a few very big name full boarding schools are actually really oversubscribed, what ever they or their websites might say. These oversubscribed schools are also usually super selective or very selective and parents are buying into the whole package which includes full boarding. All the rest are struggling to get bums on seats and will take weekly flexi boarders from the UK and looking increasingly for full boarders from abroad in particular HK, China, Russia SE Asia and Nigeria. I couldn't care less where pupils come from that can come from Mars for all I care in fact the more diverse the better. But IMO if your DS is going full board and get the most out of boarding and enjoy it you want not only diversity but also the ethos that IMO and others on here who also have actual experience of boarding only comes from a full boarding school.