My 2 kids go to boarding school, AMA

[happylady1982]

My kids are 14 and 16, they both go to boarding school. Weekly boarding. This means they come home every weekend, and during the half terms and the major holidays too (Christmas, easter, summer).

Right now it's the summer holidays so they are home.

I wanted to do an AMA cause I think people still have negative stereotypes about boarding school.

Oh dear we earn twice as your household I would never be able to afford 90K net school fee!!

How bad is your home life if sending them to boarding school was a decision you had to make to ensure their happiness?

Historically children have been 'raised by the village' rather than in a very small nuclear family groups that we have now. This gives them a wider number of trusted individuals, more role models, a better sense of safety in a wider community. Often parents had to work, so family and friends did more of the raising.

Though I agree that safeguarding could be an issue. Presumably given the general opinion that all boarding schools are a hive of abuse some money must have been invested in safeguarding in recent years and improvements made.

@happylady1982even if they picked state school?

Private school graduates are heavily overrepresented in Arts in the UK

Ofcourse at 11, children would choose a school with lots a facilities. It's hardly comparable with state schools.

It's very convenient to say, my DD wanted that school.

OP do you drop them off on a Monday morning pick up Friday afternoon or is it more like Sunday evening to Saturday morning?

Are there massive costs on top of the fees? Uniform, sports trips etc.

Do they have a one to one individual who is assigned to take care of them?

Does the school push certain careers?

Thanks

Home life is great! But if they were in any other school I'm quite certain they wouldn't have been as happy as they are now. The school they are at makes them happy. Me and my husband knew that the chances are that if the kids went to this school than boarding would be the most likely outcome, that was difficult for us as parents, but our daughter was confident she wanted to go to this school despite being nervous about boarding.

No regrets!

Weren't there any closer schools?

I think weekly boarding for teens sounds absolutely ideal. I do think 11 is a bit young though, I would be happy to send mine at 14 or so. It would be perfect for building independence, social skills, and would actually make the time spent as a family more precious.

given the insane length of private school holidays and the fact they’re home every weekend you probably don’t spend much less time with them overall anyway.

do they get to do some really fab extracurriculars via their school?

have they had any social difficulties? I have wondered about boarding, whether it would be fantastic if you have nice friends but completely awful if you don’t make close friendships and/or get bullied. And we all know that kind of stuff happens a lot at every school.

I would also be worried that all their friends are from all over and them not having much of a connection to their local area — have you found this tricky?

It would be better if the children were answering this. Obviously most parents making that decision are pro boarding schools. Also it’s only one persons experience of it and not all experiences are the same.

They come home on Friday afternoon and they go back to school on Monday morning.

Yes there is massive costs on top of the fees.

There is no one to one individual who takes care of them. There is a pastoral team responsible for a certain number students.

I mean, according to my kids the school is pretty supportive about all career paths

Again, on these AMAs, the OP is never willing to admit that there is any downside and that the kids are anything other than blissfully happy for the whole time are they are there and that all problems can be adequately discussed over the phone or at weekend intervals and the parent-child relationship is just as close as a non boarding child.

The reality will be far more nuanced.

(Edited as original query has been answered)

It sounds a bit as if your children wanted the boarding school because their primary school friends chose to go there. But countless children move to secondary schools every year without following their primary school friends, and they do absolutely fine, not least because we all tend to grow out of the friends we make at primary school.

Would it not have made sense to point that out to them before committing to boarding school? On the face of it, it's really quite odd to allow children's preferences to be the sole deciding factor in a big decision like this.

Ours boarded to ensure what they needed was available. Friends, clubs, sport, music, dance, drama, MUN, enterprise club, a full day of lessons and activities, supervised prep, good food, a sense of belonging and almost a second family. No negatives at all. One of mine passed for a grammar, the other did not so boarding gave them equality.

Honestly, due to the fact my husband and I work a lot, sometimes I feel like I blink and my kids are home for another school holiday 🤣.

Yes, the wide variety of extracurriculars is why my oldest chose this school over other schools. Plus the day to day schedule was similar to her old primary school schedule.

If my kids were having a difficult time socially I wouldn't hesitate to have them stop boarding or even change schools, depending on what my kids opinion was. But my kids are fairly popular lol, so they have a lot of friends and they share a room with their best friends.

Yeah, during the summer the kids struggle with the fact that some of their friends live so far away. But they do have friends who live here. We also have great public transport so my kids can basically travel anywhere which is great.

Do most pupils (or their parents!) aspire to get into the top universities like Oxbridge?

(You edited your response so I need to edit my response)

Of course I told them that they will make new friends. This wasn't a decision that was made in 30 minutes, this was an ongoing discussion for a while.

I went to boarding school 30 years ago, aged 11. My parents would’ve said it was my choice, at the time I would’ve said I enjoyed it and did well there.

But since having my own kids I’ve questioned my parents choices. I understand their reasoning and that times were different. But it made me realise that, while education is important, it isn’t the be-all and end-all for me. When my kids set off for school age 11 and came home at 4pm, flopping down onto their beds, taking a snack of their choosing, having dinner round the table together , bickering about homework, when they come and talk to you just as you’re going to sleep… all these really normal things I missed out on. I felt rejected, resentful, like there was something wrong with me … ultimately found and sought therapy with someone who works entirely with ex-boarders. There’s quite the community of us, with similar issues, which tend to come to light during mid-life.

I do understand that weekly boarding is different and they have access to their phone. But that’s still 4 nights a week away. And it’s not “selfish” to miss them - you're missing out on so much precious time with them. My AMA is, do you worry that there might be any repercussions when they are older & do you have ideas of how to mitigate this?

I’m very anti private school of any kind. But in defence of OP, maybe it is as perfect as it can be? Maybe the situation works for the whole family.

It’s possible

Did you say you were privately educated op?

Thanks! What extracurriculars do they do?

just trying to figure out whether teens at boarding school really are doing a different club/sport every night (most of the teens I know spend all evening on their phone or gaming!)

Do you ever spend months only seeing your husband at the weekend? Do you think it would be healthy for your relationship to do so? If not why not?

I honestly don't think this-and mine will be at the local comprehensive high school, so no skin in the game.
How can parents who let their kids be upstairs online all night honestly think they're better parents?
And nearly everyone read Malory Towers and Harry Potter, so even those of us who never went near a boarding school/lived places that didn't have them still have them in our collective consciousness.

Are you like the parents of a child I felt sorry for when I was at boarding school in the mid to late 90s....his parents lived about a quarter of a mile from the school but he was a weekly boarder as his parents were too busy and too loaded to want to have him at home during the week? I understood why my parents sent me there- lots of jobs in short sucession all around the world- but I never could and still can't to this day understand why he went to boarding school as a weekly boarder. His parents did seem friendly by the way, which just made the whole thing seem more odd.

Honestly, I don’t really buy into this lengthy reasoning. No other school, state or private, could offer what this particular school offers? This school in particular is so special that your 11 year old children wouldn’t accept any other school and you would sacrifice seeing them day to day to give them that? Why was it even presented as one of the choices given the commute?

I involved my children in their choice
of secondary school and they had the final say. That said, we considered the whole picture when picking a school, and part of that picture included location and the ability to simultaneously have a very normal day to day family life. Any school that didn’t fit that criteria wasn’t even presented as an option to an 11 year old, too young in my opinion.