I actually never wanted to send my kids to boarding school. It never crossed my mind until my oldest was 10 and we were looking at secondary schools! She went to a private primary school so we were already looking for private secondary schools because both my kids really enjoyed private school. All the options near us weren't ideal, a lot of private schools were just not the best in my opinion, the extracurricular activities options weren't great, people said the teachers were quite strict, the schedules were not ideal either. She didn't really love any of the local options, I mean she would have accepted certain schools but she didn't seem happy about the schools.
So we decided to look at schools a bit further away, and we found the school my kids currently attend. We knee about this school because a lot of her friends from primary school were going to this school, and all of them were boarding. Boarding was one of the options, flexi-boarding was also an option, being a day student was also an option. We loved the wide range of extracurricular activities, we loved the day to day schedule because it was very similar to my daughters primary school (The school day is a bit longer though). And my daughter had her heart set on this school. We did realise that if she went to this school as a day student she wouldn't get home until like 7pm every night, then she would have to eat dinner, do homework and go to bed because she would have to leave the house at 6:30 every morning for school. Obviously that kind of made us rethink our decision, but we knew weekly boarding and flexi boarding were options, and we spoke to my daughter about those options. She needed a little while to think but she did eventually decide that she wanted to board at the school. Admittedly I wanted her to Flexi-board, but she was adamant she wanted to weekly board, mainly because she said all her friends were weekly boarding and she wanted to try it too. Fair enough. Me and my husband assumed she would realise after a few weeks that weekly boarding was not the right option, but nope she loved weekly boarding. I think the stability helped, Flexi-boarding would mean she is constantly going from sleeping at home to sleeping at school, the stability to weekly boarding was great for her. And my son went to that school 2 years later, it was a much easier decision for him to decide where he wanted to go to school. He knew how much fun his big sister had at boarding school so he wanted to go too.
Obviously there is rules at boarding school but they aren't too strict. I mean, a lot of the kids live there so creating a safe and friendly environment is important. The teachers are all really kind people. The staff are lovely. After lessons, there is sports and homework (depending on the day), but after that the students get free time to do what they want.
I asked my son how he would describe boarding school to somebody who hasn't been to boarding school. This is what he said: "Okay, it's nothing like Harry Potter but it is also exactly like Harry Potter. No magic, atleast I haven't seen any magic. And things aren't as chaotic, nobody is breaking that many rules. But the friendship dynamics are quite accurate. We kind of have a staff member who I guess is our schools version of Hagrid, cool guy, is currently a master at chess. Unfortunately he isn't magic, nor is he a giant, but he's everybody's favourite member of staff." I think his response is great 🤣 Cause almost everybody who has never been to boarding school asks him if boarding school is like hogwarts