to think boarding schools are no longer ok...

I didn't say that or judge anyone. I've already said that I know a lot of people don't have a choice. It was just what I felt most comfortable with

It seems about £2000 difference, Makes me wonder why all those parents are complaining about vat bankrupting them when they supposedly happily pay for full boarding, but mainly have their kids in weekly boarding.
Or maybe parents take their kids out for special occasions at weekends, so it is very occasional.

@StandingSideBySide Do you have a link? Sorry I cant read those small charts and the ,magnifier does not work on them. Thanks.

I went to a prep school but didn’t board. My sister flexi-boarded by choice and loved it.
Anecdotally girls seem to have better experiences than boys, and I wonder if that’s because they tend to have more nurturing friendships.

I worked for a family who churned out children and sent them all to board at 8 because that’s what they had done and their parents before them and grandparents etc. Very, very successful family, three of them are at the top of their fields. All are emotional wastelands but have no idea. They have idyllically material lives, have married similar people, are repeating the same pattern with their own children. They have no idea that they’re fucked up because they only socialise with people like them, from a similar background. It’s like that awful film Saltburn but in real life. Weird as fuck.

Same, I agree with you but am going to have to put my child into nursery too. Work won't let me reduce my hours to part time so I'm having to return full time for around 12 weeks and then will stay at home for a whilst she's tiny. I have to go back for 12 weeks though otherwise I'm liable to pay back a lot of the mat leave payments.

Ours were quite strict but tbh they wouldn’t have had time anyway with Saturday school am and sporting commitments after lunch then on Sunday there’s Cathedral.
They had Exeats though ( mid term break, none of ours wanted to come home though ).
Plus we could meet for lunch in town whenever they were free, even during the week if they had free periods.

I didn’t say every weekend. There are plenty of parents paying for full boarding where children go home for weekends, when they want to. The difference in price between weekly and full boarding is often relatively very small.

Ok
The 2020 date accounts for the discrepancy in numbers, that makes sense. There’s not really a lot in it year on year but here’s some nice diagrams 😌 courtesy of the ISC latest report.
The one with the pie charts is interesting as it gives intel on boarding based on type and age.

The site has weekly boarding separately accounted for. Of course full boarders might go home occasionally at weekends, but nobody is paying for full boarding covering weekends, but taking their child home every weekend. That would be crazy. Just pay for weekly boarding.

I would never put my child in a boarding school. Never

How very judgemental. You think your childcare was superior because you used a childminder or nanny. Wow.

“Full boarders” are often allowed home at weekends when they choose though. There are very few schools left where pupils are only allowed home during exeats.

@StandingSideBySide From here https://www.schoolsmith.co.uk/boarding-schools/

I know they are from 2020 and there are more recent sources, but they are the only ones I could find that broke down the kind of boarding taking place.

Where’s this from as the 2023 census states 66,000 pupils at boarding and the ISC states 70,000 ( at one time or another ) ie accounting for those that stay occasionally due to weekend sporting commitments etc
Just interested in where your stats are from

@Another76543 About 80% of boarders are full boarders. The rest are weekly boarders or flexi board.

So if we remove the 1% to allow for the tiny number whose circumstances mean they are better off NOT living at home I would say 50% of Boarding school pupils have no good reason to be there - other than convenience for the parents.

And as for saying its not necessarily Boarding school that messes people up - virtually ALL the men I went to school with who Boarded (and I keep in touch with) are divorced or single whereas most of the ones who were Day pupils are married. Small sample and could just be a very odd coincidence but i think its telling.

At junior level, which is what the OP was mainly talking about, the picture is very different. Only 35% or so are full boarders. Even at senior level, “full boarding” does not mean that children only go home for holidays either. I don’t know of a school which doesn’t offer exeat weekends, and full boarders often go home for weekends in between.

Many boarding school pupils have been at home for 3 days this weekend, as it was exeat. They’ll be home again in 2.5 weeks for almost a month off at Christmas. It’s worth noting that school terms are much shorter, and school holidays much longer, at boarding schools. It’s not unusual to have 9 weeks off in the summer, 2 weeks in October, 4 weeks at Christmas, a week at half term, another 4 weeks at Easter, and another week in May. 20 odd weeks of the year are spent away from school. The idea that these children are packed off for weeks on end simply isn’t true.

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.

They aren't remotely comparable.

For all those saying that they know of emotionally troubled and unhappy adults who went to boarding school, there are plenty of adults who didn’t go to boarding school who have mental health problems. There are plenty of adults who hated school who didn’t board. There is a huge mental health problem amongst teens and young people. We should be looking at the causes of that rather than trying to blame boarding school, which very few (far less than 1%) of children attend.

In the UK there are 497 mainstream schools that offer boarding to 75,000 pupils.
On average, two-thirds of pupils at boarding schools are day pupils. 4% of the total boarding population is younger than 11 - so 4,000 pupils. 87% of all boarders are at a senior school.

About 80% of boarders are full boarders. The rest are weekly boarders or flexi board. So the vast majority of boarders still stay at school all week, going home for holidays.

Point is does she really understand that hating it is an option?
So many kids at my school were all a bit "meh" about it and would have said it was fine BUT it had been sold to them as necessary in the majority of cases and it really wasn't.

@Hoppinggreen if I'm right your question is what I'd do if she hated it?

Point is she doesn't, a lot of them flexi board for them it's just a sleep over with their mates.

Now given that boarding/day/private schools often serve a really broad geographic area, it gives them a chance to do something they wouldn't do otherwise.

Also a different school I know a lot of them sleep over/board Friday nights too as they are up early for rowing/hockey/rugby. It's a sports centric school.

As I said, I think a lot of people still perceive that this is all leather trunks and off you pop....and this might come as shock but actually the vast majority of the full term boarders at her school are Chinese. International boarders make up the vast majority.

It's a rare thing nowadays to find a boarding school with majority UK boarders.

Boarders are not away from home for weeks or months at a time though. There are very few full boarding schools left, even at 13+, and even those are set up so they see parents at least every 3 weeks (in reality, much more, as parents visit). Particularly at prep stage, boarding tends to be on a flexi basis where children only spend part of the week away from home.