To think it’s totally wrong to board children in another country during a global pandemic *title edited by MNHQ at OP's request*

[Totalbeach]

I live in a town with two boarding schools (junior and senior) and there’s another 3 - 18 school nearby. All are day as well as boarding. I assumed that they’d empty due to the pandemic but they are as packed as ever. As far as I understand, kids have always been able to fly home to parents as essential travel even during lockdowns etc, but many kids haven’t gone home for holidays due to quarantining restrictions either end. Pupils at the schools are largely from China but there are other nationalities too (including U.K. boarders of course).

AIBU to be totally shocked that even during a global pandemic families are willing to send their children overseas to live? I think it’s actually neglectful to the point of being deeply immoral. And I’m quite surprised that it’s even legal to have children age 7+ boarding in another country in the first place.

YABU It’s fine
YANBU It’s awful

@apooagnuandyou

**not everyone can suddenly become a SAH parent hmm

You might be homeschooling, but if you are not, you are being judged by homeschooling parents for not doing it yourself 😂

Do what you want for your family, but you are not in a position to judge or comment on other families**

You might not agree with it, but everyone is allowed an opinion on a public forum

Enko . You are doing the best for her.

Why is it different to boarding your children if you live in the uk?

Gosh, imagine! If there is a recession or industry re-shuffle during one's life and you have to take whatever job you can get to keep the wolf from the door. If circumstances change and you have to take some work and your kids can't be with you all the time! Shame on all those people who live in some places where it's common enough to have to take work abroad the support everyone, they're just not as good parents as you. hmm

@osbertthesyrianhamster

No one in Britain needs to work abroad. That’s a lifestyle choice to earn more money. That’s fair enough but IMO money isn’t as important as family time.

Plenty of parents work full time because these days they to to support their family but they’ll see their children on a morning, after school weekends etc... sending them to boarding school you’d miss all of that.

Boarders at a school local to us have had a pretty normal life in the past year. They've had their own bubble for socialising, school carried on as normal and they could avail themselves to the excellent sporting facilities in the school when no one else could. I would say that their parents made the right call in sheltering them from the impact of the pandemic in this way if anything.

Our local boarding school had a huge outbreak of covid a couple of months ago, the health board authorities pinned it down to a local teacher who was a house parent, so it was not overseas students at all.

@OfaFrenchmind2

Boarded children actually had the best education possible during this pandemic. They have kept their regular classes without interruption, have kept their social groups, and most of their normal activities. No gap in education like normal schoolchildren and continuous contact with their peers and friends. I think they did pretty well actually, and were lucky!

I agree with this. My children would have loved to be boarding during lockdown. They would have been with their friends, had normal lessons and been able to use all the sports facilities. Instead they spent it glued to a screen with stressed overstretched parents nagging them.

My dc board as we live overseas due to work- there are no English speaking schools here.

What do you suggest as an alternative?

It's also legal to travel throughout the pandemic for work or education reasons.

@swimlittlefishy

Did it ever occur to you that its none of your business?

Oh do behave

Don’t assume everyone shares your ‘values’.

Apply some of this yourself first please. You've hit the nail on the head on your own without even realising it. Different families, different values.

To answer your initial question, what do you think parents should have done in March 2020? Pull the kids out of school indefinitely, because 'pandemic'? These kids, neglected or not, have the right to as smooth an education as possible. If anything, you could argue boarding schools would achieve that better than day schools. I don't understand what you think the solution should have been, you can't indefinitely pull the child out of school, without disrupting, in many cases, the whole family. I was living on a military base in, I don't know, Northern Cyprus (no idea if there are military bases there), my partner was deployed every X weeks and my life lacked any kind of consistency, the last thing I could've done was pull my kids out of school, organise an international relocation in the middle of the first wave when flights really stopped - now there are some at least - find new schools, get the kids adjusted to a new life, all for the sake of a pandemic that will most likely affect 2-3 of their 12 years in education.

Are you also someone who thinks people demanding travel restrictions to be eased so they can visit their families abroad, should have thought about global pandemics before moving to a different country? Or they should have moved back/have their relative come back as soon as the pandemic started?

It's not as easy as pulling your child out of a school in another continent, or relocating/uprooting your whole family when things get tough. I'm sure none of these international boarders' families are happy with the situation, they must miss their children so much. However, life is more complicated than you think.

@TableFlowerss

*Gosh, imagine! If there is a recession or industry re-shuffle during one's life and you have to take whatever job you can get to keep the wolf from the door. If circumstances change and you have to take some work and your kids can't be with you all the time! Shame on all those people who live in some places where it's common enough to have to take work abroad the support everyone, they're just not as good parents as you. hmm*

@osbertthesyrianhamster

No one in Britain needs to work abroad. That’s a lifestyle choice to earn more money. That’s fair enough but IMO money isn’t as important as family time.

Plenty of parents work full time because these days they to to support their family but they’ll see their children on a morning, after school weekends etc... sending them to boarding school you’d miss all of that.

😂😂😂

Here we go again with a boarding school bashing thread 🙄

I think I am going to start a thread about “why do people have children if they are going to send them to nursery?” “They will be damaged for life”.

And then just keep arguing hysterically that every parent who really loved their children would give up their job, their house and all relationships just to focus on the children...

@Kinlocrhum

My dc board as we live overseas due to work- there are no English speaking schools here.

What do you suggest as an alternative?

It's also legal to travel throughout the pandemic for work or education reasons.

Tableflowers is your person here, Kin. Apparently NO ONE in Britain needs to work abroad. 😂😂😂

There are many reasons parents choose overseas boarding.

1. they are in the armed forces and stationed somewhere 'unsafe' or move regularly. A boarding school in a 'safe' country offers security and stability
2. they are in an industry that requires regular moves (like diplomatic service) and the above also applies
3. they live in a country like China where there is a belief that a UK education is much better than a local one. It sets the child up for a much more 'successful' career and future. The parents believe they are doing the very best for the child as judged by their culture. Interestingly in these countries children are sometimes expected to give their parents their first pay check (or a gift of that value) to say thank you for the sacrifices they made for their education.
4. they live in a remote location which makes boarding the main choice for education

During covid, as a parent I think I'd rather keep my child somewhere I could see as safe rather than with me.

@osbertthesyrianhamster
I roll my eyes any time I read the term 'global pandemic'. The 'global' is superfluous

Not necessarily, the definition of pandemic is globally OR over a widespread area crossing boarders’. So it doesn’t always mean globally.

As for the OP, I’m not a fan of private education boarding or not. However there are many kids who are better off boarding for many reasons, if as a child someone had offered me a boarding school to get away from my home life I’d have jumped at the chance.
I don’t think the pandemic really makes any difference though.

No one in Britain needs to work abroad.

I'm going to disagree with you on that because my industry is based on working abroad, simply due to the fact that the UK doesn't pay high enough rates for people to be able to earn a full salary staying at home. We are all forced to work internationally if we want to feed our families. This is the reality of a lot of people in the sports and arts industries.

Sure, we could all quit our jobs and find a supermarket school hours, term time position like people on MN seem to have, but that's not going to help the economy, is it?

Nice to see some normality here, though, a good ol' boarding school bashing thread!

sending your children away

Love that good old MN phrase.

The families clearly have enormous faith in the English public school system, and the pastoral care and quality of friendship their children can enjoy there. Perhaps this faith is well-placed. I admire the rights culture we have in Britain and the legislation which upholds the well-being and expectations of children.

I wouldn't be surprised if the parents ask the children and they say they'd like to stay in Britain and keep in touch with home via Skype.

You are talking about a handful of children, only probably. The circumstances involved might be extreme.

You don't know what the families circumstances are like, or how stable or safe the home countries are. The families might live in dictatorships; they parents might have underground mobs or political enemies literally waiting to stab them in the back. There may be inadequate supplies of oxygen or medicines. The parents may come from family cultures in which parents are not close to their own children in a way that we might know it. I have known of married couples whose families lived historically in sub-Saharian African countries, and still live their, who, on coming to Europe to work, send their infants back to the home country to be cared for by relatives, and see them twice a year until they are ten, when they come back here. I've known of other families whose teenagers return to Africa for their secondary education.

Yes, Britain is seen as a caring, nurturing country, and the matrons and house mothers in the school might be lovely.

I wouldn't have done it personally.

Tableflowerss is your person here, Kin. Apparently NO ONE in Britain needs to work abroad

@osbertthesyrianhamster

Someone’s having difficulty understanding the concept of choice......

I don’t have any power to stop people neglecting their children

so in summary Totalbeach is a judgemental uneducated racist.
I pity your kids to be stuck with you!

Diplomatic service, Foreign Office, Armed Forces, Security Services etc are often posted overseas - it's not a choice!!

Well I wouldn’t send my kids to boarding school myself because I live a nice safe existence here in the U.K.

But I can think of many countries or jobs overseas which if I was in them or lived there and had the means to send my children to the U.K. I would do so. It’s safer here than many other places.
Remember this started in China. I was teaching Chinese students at university in 2020 and they all chose to stay in the U.K. over returning home. They missed and worried about their families but their parents encouraged them to stay here. I imagine much the same for Chinese school pupils boarding here.

@ComtesseDeSpair

Was this meant to sound so awful?

If it made you think about how other parents might feel when you criticise their parenting whilst having little to no understanding of or insight into their culture or choices, then yes, it was.

Fair enough. You know me very well, clearly. I do take offence to the sneery way the word average was emphasised I'm afraid.

@Kinlocrhum

Diplomatic service, Foreign Office, Armed Forces, Security Services etc are often posted overseas - it's not a choice!!

If you go into the MN race to the bottom spirit, technically it's a CHOICE as they could chose something else, work in a local factory or become a TA (keeping hours suitable with a life with young children).

Some posters really are stupid, or lack any ambition and interest.