To think boarding schools are an expensive version of neglect?

[WriterofDreams]

I don't get boarding schools at all. Especially for young children. I will never forget watching a documentary about 7 year olds being sent to boarding school and the fear and upset the poor girls went through being separated from their families. For what? The mums seemed to think the poor children's suffering was necessary in service of their futures. Surely it's more important for them to grow up in their families and enjoy their siblings? I don't have a huge amount of personal experience of boarding schools so I may be missing something important. I do know however know two adults who were sent to boarding school as young children and consider themselves seriously damaged by it.

Surely it's better for a young child to be raised by people who genuinely love them than by a house mother who may be kind and loving but who essentially is just doing a job? AIBU to see boarding school as a form of high class care system for the wealthy?

I think it's good people are staying on the thread when there are some very very different views and very strong feelings. The forces as I said is a bit of a red herring as most boarding school children don't have parents in the forces. Obviously historically we have sought to protect our soldiers because we feel the forces are important, although not everyone shares that view so we give them things civilians don't have. I'm pretty certain you'd get a great take up if you offered single parent NHS doctors a 90% boartding school subsidy on the basis they work so hard and long hours they find it hard to be with the children a lot in the week and we want to support doctors but we don't.

It isn't just men abroad. There's a UK woman i Iraq I think with 5 children in the UK (single parent) with 3 in boarding school. And we must not be sexist about this. It is no worse for a mother than a father to go abroad for work.

It's just the total package of boarding school which troubles me - the fact some even older children don't like it and some don't even say they don't like it. I would question loads once a year and the answers worried me - these were picked at random not those crying into hankies - phrases like I got through it, I survived it, difficult at first etc etc. I just don't like that terminology. Nor do I think children should always be given wha they want of course but I think what they gain is often less than what they lose. In fact our oldest did apply to one boarding school (and 5 other schools at 11 when we thought she might not get into her current school seniors, (Habs) although she did get in and she is probably the sort of girl who would have been fine there. The 3 boys were also offered it if they wanted it but they didn't but of course does a child really ever make a choice which is anything other than what the parents or propaganda has said to them?

Read Roal Dahl's description on the boarding school survivors' association web site I liked above. He was very young but even so. Even at 13 you are in effect separated from those whom you love. Yes we lead busy lives at home b ut just the eye contact, the keeping an eye on the child the physical touching (not that most teenagers want hours of cuddles of course) is not replaceable even with skype.

Swallowedafly.
Are you being deliberately offensive? Are you saying women who are married to men in the forces all just sit around all day doing nothing?
Do you seriously have so little knowledge of what life is like in the military that you are quite happy to say, lets just build a big base and all the women and children can stay there and the men can visit when they have finished playing soldiers?

Amazing.

There are army schools in Germany. My SIL is the snobby wife of an army officer who refused to send her young children to a local army school - she suddenly turned into some kind of one-woman-Ofsted-International - and wouldn't leave her husband and her cushy 'G&T in the Mess' lifestyle to bring the children back to England, but instead chose to take up the option of sending them to boarding school at the earliest possible age on the tax payers' dollar.

Even when army officer husband was posted back to England, she has kept them in the nearby boarding school, at tax payers' expense.

What a rip-off. I am really glad that MN has exposed this waste of public money through this thread.

And it's a perk only available to officers and civil of a certain rank, isn't it? I think the lower orders are just left to get on with it. Talk about anachronistic elitism.

So far on this thread I have learnt:

that the majority of boarders have their mothers not working and following their fathers round like puppy dogs

The children are abandonded, and have no involvement in the discussion and are left in the autumn to be seen again in the summer.

Only rich people go to boarding schools

Only the upper class go to boarding schools

In the real world I have learnt:

that the majority of boarders have nothing to do with forces, and come from a diverse range of career families including but not limited to: farmers, actors, musicians, solicitors, lawyers, doctors, accountants, teachers.

Also parents can have terminal illnesses and/or long term disabilities

The majority of parents are at the school far more often than they are with day pupils, it is not just the five minutes in the playground pick up, and christmas play. It is having dinner with the children, it is having lunch with the children. It is for chapel services, it is hanging out in their rooms.

Majority of boarders are having some sort of financial assistance for their place from 10% to over 100% (i.e. free uniforms etc as well)

There are children from council estates, and castles. There are children from parents who are on state benefits only, working class parents, low middle class, upper middle class and the upper classes.

fellatio, I'm not in the forces but do come from a forces family. So I am not panicked about anything.

When you get a new posting it is often given at short notice, sometimes only 4 weeks. Most good schools are oversubscribed and so when along comes a family who need a place for two children in 4 weeks guess which school will have places? Yep the crap ones. Every time.

Linerunner - everyone in the Services is entitled to the same amount of continuity of education allowance. One reason there are not so many lower ranks claiming CEA is that they don't serve as long as Officers.
Plus if you are posted back to UK and you take your children out you are often expected to pay back the CEA as you have broken the continuity principle.

The majority have some form of financial assistance? Really? I find that hard to believe TBH.

Yes, I understand that would happen and it must be hard. But it is an argument for staying in one place and accepting that your husband/partner must come to you when on leave - which is the same decision that many non-forces people whose work is transient must make. But when I am prime minister and we have Forces schools that won't need to happen.

received but it's a kind of forced contact isn't it? The parent goes and watches the match. the child plays. Then the child is with the parent with others around or at an artificial tea. It's not a I am at home and tired and can cry or shout at mummy and daddy. It's a distancing, even that type of contact.

I've been very careful to say lots of children aren't damaged by it and that I'm glad we live in a country where parents can choose whether children are educated at home or at day or private schools and of all kinds but it's good to debate the issues about it.

The forces subsidy of 90% fees up to the upper cap is probably a topic for another thread but I think it unlikely it will be radically changed given we've a Conservative Govenrment in place which is pretty committed to the forces. I posted the proposed changes on the link above. It was just under £6k odd maximum per term. Schools charging £30k you therefore have quite a bit of a top up particuarly if you have 3 or 4 children boarding.

Fellatio: the criteria for CEA does not include rank and it is used by commissioned officers, NCOs and the ranks. The criteria are based on mobility.

The idea of having "Forces only" boarding schools is bring resisted (see the AFF survey), because parents want to be able to choose the school that suits their individual child, though there is an MoD boarding school (Queen Victoria) available plus DOYRMS (which has recently opened its doors to civilian families too). The free school policy might permit the opening of SCE schools within UK, and might be a way to ameliorate the problems that arise from the constant house moving. But until such schools actually exist, the option isn't available, and parents do what they see as best for their individual children in their particular circumstances.

CEA is only paid for schools on the permitted MOD list. It's not a free for all. But there is also resistance to shortening the list, again so parents can find the best fit for their child.

Yes LineRunner that is my point exactly!!!!

I am not anti-private education, and I am not anti-forces, so I have no agenda to push there. I just find this susbidy thing very dodgy and open to opportunistic abuse.

Of course they want to choose meditrina - don't we all? But if we don't like what's on offer from the state we stump up all the money for the alternative ourselves. All of it. I'm not sure why it should be any different for forces families, once all the obvious issues are taken into consideration and provided for.

I thought there were schools that were more forces orientated, I can't remember the name of the naval one over suffolk way I believe.

Found it - Royal Hospital School Ipswich.

www.rncom.mod.uk/Family_Wellbeing/Education/Boarding_School.aspx

They choose it, because acceptable alternatives are not in place. Moving school, sometimes on very short notice, not at the natural educational break points, and frequently, is very bad for children socially and educationally.

CEA is available to the forces because of the mobility requirement, not because of long hours or demands of the job. That is why it is not available to eg doctors who are not required to move job and home to places not of their choosing throughout their career.

But swallowed apparently they do have to move around. A wife can easily do without her children but can't possibly be away from her man.

F I didn't move could you kindly tell me where the hell I'd live? We can't afford for DP to be here and me to be somewhere else, and it costs nearly a grand to do a round trip. Or is this one of those 'it's never acceptable for a woman to leave her children but fine for a man' situations?

Only a very small minority on this thread would be able to answer that question as there is only a very small minority of boarders with their parents in the forces!!!