to think boarding schools are no longer ok...

If you read my posts you’ll see mine boarded in their final Alevel years…….

just read back over my posts and I haven’t actually mentioned that hopping so it’s a fare assumption on your part
apologies.

You are actually admitting that your DC asked to leave home at an early age?
You think thats a good thing?

The ONS stats show that under 5s spend a median of 22 hours a week in formal childcare out of a total 168h a week. That includes children who are in reception at school (who will be spending 32.5 h at school) and children who are at a childminder but does not include those who are with grandparents. 22 hours a week is 4.5h a day for 5 days a week or a 10h day twice a week. Assuming all of their sleeping hours (96 a week for a 1-2yo including a daytime nap or two) are at home they are spending up to 48h awake at home so over double what they spend at nursery.

I can't see how a preschooler spending less than a third of their waking time each week away from their primary caregiver and seeing them every morning and night is in any way equivalent to a 7 year old being sent away from home for weeks on end.

For under 13s NO.

But for over 13s I would recommend it.

For girls anyway. I don't know what boys get up to at boarding school. But I personally had 2 terms at boarding school (all to do with my parents being abroad for a while). All girls and I LOVED IT. Mind you I am an extrovert and I know that some girls HATED it because they had hardly any time to themselves.

Only if your counting hours while the baby is asleep

See the pie charts i posted for 2023

The 80% is also not correct as that is the figure for senior years and this thread is about younger kids
That figure stands at approx 35%

apreciate you couldn’t read my chart though

It's not incorrect information.

True full boarding schools are the minority.

It's well for you. A lot of us aren't able to do that.

Mine loved nursery. I was happier with them there than with a childminder. I had two who should never have been minding children, and it took time for that to come to light.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow 80 per cent of boarders are full boarding. I shared the stats on this thread.
I do wish you would not keep sharing incorrect info.

There are very few true full boarding schools left anymore - most are flexi or weekly.

But this is exactly what is being done to parents who choose boarding school - or indeed those of us whose parents chose to send us to board. The insinuation that we were unloved and our parents should have made different choices.

You feel uncomfortable with the suggestion that perhaps you should have sacrificed career, or moved to an area with cheap housing or made other choices to enable you to stay at home full-time in the early years.

Yet on this thread, I've been told that my parents should have moved house and job so that I could have not gone to the boarding school that I really wanted to attend. And where I did far more fun things than I would have done at home (and I was still at home for well over half of every year).

Some of us are just pointing out that one option gets totally demonised - generally by those who have no experience of boarding and wouldn't choose it for their children - and now to the point where people want to ban that choice for others.

Or when kids want to board
As mine did

Despite several MNs and others explaining to me how to do that link thing I can’t link
Apologies

If you google
ISC census and annual report 2023 it comes up as the top result

Or if you click on the image I sent you can then zoom in

No one is criticising private schools. This is about boarding. And mo0st pupils who board, do full board.

@ForRealTurtle apologies I missed the context

@BaklavaRocks I think you'll find many of us chose private school for SEN reasons. State system is often a shitshow for SEN.

Flexi boarding my SEN DD15 has grown her confidence massively too along with the lovely small class sizes.

I'm quickly concluding that as a lone parent who works full time I actually DGAF what other women (because it is definitely not then men that judge me on this) think about my child rearing or educational choices for my DD.

@corkindigo My point is that there are comments stating things as fact that are just untrue.

Well personally I'd prefer to see my child every day. They might be strangers to start with, then they get to know them. My kids loved their caregivers. I had to take my eldest after 9am every day because there was one minder she got very attached to and she preferred that she was there when she went in.

Presumably you have never used a nursery so don't judge what you don't know!

You are absolutely judging people who send their babies to nursery. Do you think we did it for the hell of it?

6% of all boarders are children of UK Forces parents. A further 6% are children of UK parents working overseas. A significant 37% of boarders are foreign nationals.51%, of the total boarding population of 75,000 pupils are UK parents not working overseas or in the military.

What's your point? It's still a choice being made by the parents, it's not necessary to work in the military nor indeed is it even necessary to use boarding school if you are, especially in this day in age you can forge a career that enables a better work life balance in the military, but it does restrict choices and career growth, something we were happy to CHOOSE for our children to avoid boarding school.

Of course we're not! Are we seeing generations of traumatised children as a result? No.

Maternity leave wasn't 6 months though. It was 18 weeks when I had my elder two, 25 and 27. Can't remember how long it was with my 3rd but it was slightly longer.

That's just ridiculous. So what do you want parents to do? More fucking guilt-tripping. I needed to work for many reasons. My children loved nursery. They did far more fun things than I would ever have done with them.

It's neglect. The science of child development overwhelmingly points to children needing a caring, loving and supporting care-giver.
I could never understand how a parent could pack their young child off to be looked after by random people.

Nursery does not prevent kids having a positive attachment to their parents. Such bullshit!

Anyone remember this awful hammer attack by a pupil on two other pupils as they slept?
https://www.cps.gov.uk/south-west/news/update-private-school-pupil-given-life-sentence-ham