Waterboarding in top public school

That sounds horrific and I'm glad these entitled little shits have been expelled. Hope investigation happens as there are bound to have been a long lead up. The victims will need help. Sadly money is no substitute for actually parenting your kids and not outsourcing that to a private boarding/day school. Some of these kids have worse attachment disorders and low resilience than inner city schemes.

I'm not sure what your AIBU is? Are you surprised that this happens? I went to a boys boarding school. Waterboarding would be considered light hearted 🤣
And if you're coming from the opposite angle then I also don't understand what your AIBU is that rich families were able to buy their children out of a difficult and even illegal situation.

Where should they have gone?

They're very sporty = good for the school teams.
Their parents are rich = good for the school, they've probably been promised a new lab or whatever once the kids leave.

There's not a lot you can say to your DS except money talks and life isn't fair. At the end of the day the parents want the "best" for their DC and will use their money and connections to achieve it rather than parenting the little toads

@MarshaMelrose I'm assuming the issue is the highly selective state school suddenly finding spaces for rich kids when they didn't have space to take hard working kids with less affluent parents.

Whereas other children have to go to the struggling state school down the road.

A school that isn’t oversubscribed, for a start. Maybe the police station, too.

So...second, third hand information? You know for a fact the schools concerned are over-subscribed? As in year 11s on the waiting list, not year 7s?

Highly selective private schools are just that- selective. They can pick and choose without much justification.

Why not say the schools? Otherwise gossip taints any school that might fit your description. Tonbridge and Judd? Haven’t heard that any boys have joined Y11 suddenly. Judd isn’t short of sporty pupils or wealthy parents. Admission criteria is very strict for oversubscribed state schools, so can’t think that a school would accept pupils in these circumstances unless instructed to by LEA.

Or does “Whiff” imply Whitgift? In which case it would be another superselective having to take the pupils.

I bloody hope you're joking.

Whilst they should be found a school place, agree that it need not have been a selective school, certainly not if they had not passed an equivalent of the 11 plus at some stage.

How proud their parents must be, who raises these knobs?

So they were walked in on having another child strapped to a board with their head lower than their feet, with a wet rag in the mouth/ covering mouth and nose and water being slowly poured on the rag?

seems a bit elaborate for school.

I would assume you mean they bogwashed another student?

not saying that’s acceptable but there are magnitudes of degrees between the two things

My husband attended a very well known boarding school, waterboarding would be so minor no one would have noticed it.

A state school is instructed by the LEA to take on students, state schools don’t set their own admission criteria (beyond faith), they don’t get to pick names from a waiting list, they know how many are waiting in certain year groups, but they don’t receive a name etc until they are instructed to fill places 499 and 500 with pupils x and z by the the LEA’s admissions authority.

This does sound like gossip. I'd also want to know the schools involved (I was also assuming Tonbridge then Judd/Skinner's/Dartford). All the top grammars seem to have a very strict admission criteria and have to be fairly transparent and open to appeal.

Sounds like total gossip, hearsay and rumour.

Don’t spread this stuff that you have no source for.

Hmm, was it actually waterboarding?
Tonbridge and Judd came to mind first.

If the victim or their parents went to the police then police would have been involved.

I don't understand what you feel you need to explain to your 16 year old OP? This sounds a little like gossip and very little else, and at 16 you shouldn't need to have to explain something that has nothing to do with you to your son.

As others have said - I'm pretty certain waterboarding isn't that unusual in the settings in question, I've seen worse at rugby clubs and boys schools can be pretty tough going - but again if it wasn't someone in you're family it isn't really any of your business?

Gossip.Who cares? Why does your ds care? Does it affect him?

All these people saying "waterboarding is normal" - do you mean dunking peoples heads down the toilet or the actual torture definition of the word?

Because there's a huge huge difference.

This.

I’m interested that people think having ones head flushed down the toilet is somehow acceptable and a bit of a prank.

Who has said that?