to think boarding schools are no longer ok...

[BaklavaRocks]

Inspired by another thread, and some old YouTube documentaries I've recently watched, I can't help but feel boarding schools for under 13's (i.e. boarding prep schools) have had their time.

Maybe they used to be an acceptable option, but with all the research we now have available, showing the damage done by separation of young children from their parents, do you think boarding for v young kids (8/9/10/11) will eventually be banned except in v exceptional circumstances?

And if our politicians including past PMs like Johnson and Cameron were not a product of boarding schools, do you think they'd have more compassion and be less cut off from emotion and feelings? and better able to relate to us common folk?

I work in a lovely boarding school. It's completely unrecognisable from the sorts of stories you hear from older generations. Most of our boarders are 13+, we have a few aged 11-12, we don't have any primary aged.

The biggest difference is that our kids have a huge amount of freedom and autonomy. They can cook their own meals if they don't fancy the school supper. They're allowed into town by themselves any afternoon. They can go home/have family to visit any weekend, there's no official exeat weekends. And there's no Snape-like House Masters - the house staff have very much an Uncle/Aunt approach.

And these days most of the kids speak to their parents most days, which makes an enormous difference both to the boarding school experience, but also to the family experience. If anything, boarding makes more sense now than in the past.

Gosh, did she really actually say that? She must believe it as well then. You're right, that does say it all. It's generational isn't it.

Happiest day of my life was leaving my boarding school at 18 having been a full boarder since nine and a half (1979 - 1988). I found being away at uni easy by comparison though, so swings and roundabouts I suppose.

In those days and at my school we weren't allowed to speak to our parents for the first week to help us settle in, then we were allowed a weekly phone call and could write letters home. I think it was at least three weeks before I saw my parents again (for an exeat).

I've no personal objection to young teens who want to board being weekly boarders though.

Jo

My siblings and I all boarded in the 1980’s. There was absolutely no pastoral care. My brothers were routinely beaten. If you didn’t cry, you would get a polo. I often reflect on how it must have affected people like our politicians.

"Boarding schools seem to be fair game in a way nurseries are not."

Because kids live at boarding school.

They don't live at nursery.

Wow! 7! That's young. I wonder how your mum felt.

Glad it worked out for you and for your children :)

There's lots of different types of boarding schools and reasons why a child might be in them. I attended a boarding school from the age of 10 to 13 and actually it's not something I wouldn't do with my kids if I had the money to. But the school I attended did flexi boarding. Very rarely did I stay over a weekend and when I did it was my own choice because the school was doing an activity like going camping etc, which I wanted to join in with.
Most nights I stayed would be Thursday Friday. I had a good time, was more able to focus on work as they had a dedicated homework hour supervised by staff, got to play late into the evening with all my friends in fantastic woodland... there was an outdoor swimming pool in the summer evenings.. I have some incredible memories.
HOWEVER one of my best friends there was there as her parents lived abroad and she was a full boarder. I could see that she had an incredibly difficult time emotionally. She left because she had a complete breakdown and her parents decided to school her locally in the country they lived in in the end.
That was a really relaxed very small school as well. Only 120 pupils aged 4-13. So small class sizes and quite like a big family.
It still had a very negative effect on my friend. So under no circumstances but a complete emergency would I ever fully board a child that young.
I think most boarding schools now days allow part time boarding.. which i do feel can be a great experience for kids and can help parents with childcare.
Leaving a child for months at a time at school will, in my opinion, always have a negative effect regardless of how lovely you think the school is.

I don't disagree with 13+ boarding.

However safeguarding worries me. How do you stop children on child abuse? I'm guessing kids aren't locked in their rooms so is there anything to stop a child or teen entering anothers room. Not all children have lovely home lives

The horror stories I heard largely related to drug and alcohol abuse, very under age sex and insidious subtle but inescapable bullying to be fair. I don't recall any of them complain about their teachers.

That's largely because after the 1980s benefits were much more restricted so the arts got taken over by the independently wealthy, not just acting, but music and artists too. Long gone are the days of working class people living in squats, claiming the dole for a few years and honing their craft, it's only the rich who can really afford that now.

I personally believe that most people in the boarding school system end up with attachments issues, although growing up to parents who also were intergenerational boarders probably impacts this too. I grew up in a town with 1 state secondary and about 6 large boarding schools and most of the boarders were pretty maladjusted.
Also it might have changed more recently, but bullying, abuse and sexual abuse in particular (both by pupils and teachers) were rife in the system and often accepted and encouraged via institutional traditions like fagging until at least the 90s and I expect a lot of sexual abuse and rape is still covered up to protect the reputation of the schools.

I was listening to a colleague talking about boarding school recently and how enlightened they are now, the great pastoral care etc, how they could hardly be considered boarding in the true sense because they enforce time at home now too. I think she said one weekend in 6, and all holidays?

When I asked how it worked with the students who don’t have family in the country, she told me that they’re placed with host families for their holidays. Maybe I’m over sensitive, but I just can’t see how being sent to live with strangers on breaks is in the children’s interest, or how that would constitute a break. At least if they stayed in school they’d be in familiar surroundings.

sorry op, that’s veering off topic a bit. I couldn’t imagine packing mine off when they were little. When I read Malory Towers to dd, I identified completely with Gwen’s “silly mother” in the opening chapter.

I boarded from 9-18 and loved it.
My kids both boarded 13-16 and 13-18 - both really enjoyed it.
You'll always find people with a range of experiences due to personalities and the type of school.
I now work at a school with flexi-boarding (between 1-4 nights per week) and the kids love it!

When you become ill at boarding school, eg stomach bug, do you stay there or go home for a few days?

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/jul/12/ampleforth-inquiry-finds-alleged-serious-abuse-against-pupils-in-last-10-years

In 2020 the college was temporarily barred from taking on new pupils by the Department for Education, and in 2021 an Ofsted inspection rated its leadership as inadequate and reported that “some younger pupils with identified [special needs] engaged in sexual activity during the school day while not supervised sufficiently well”.

So in 2021, children in Ampleforth, one of the UK's most prestigious boarding schools were engaging in sexual activity during the school day.

Loved it seriously you loved being away from your parents.

your one of the rare lucky ones then as I know 40s years and older thst hated it and got abused physically and sexually and bullied daily. You can’t escape it, it’s even worse if it’s the damn teacher.

and the person that said it was Mallory Towers you need to actually read the books.

@DeffoNeedANameChange

"If anything, boarding makes more sense now than in the past."

It's always made sense for parents who don't want to spend much time with their children and would rather them be supervised 24/7 by other adults.

My parents sent me and my siblings because they moved country every 3 years and were told it was better for us educationally to have that stability. Mum and dad both left school at 15 and took the advice of better educated peers seriously. My mum has never forgiven herself for letting us go, because she now knows that was a load of shite and we could have got a perfectly adequate education without going to boarding school.

A friend of mine, and her siblings, went to boarding school from very young. Then straight to university and then their parents bought all three houses. They had a nanny for the early years. I often wonder why they bothered - all three of them are messed up emotionally

Our school had what we called the 'san' (sanatorium), basically hospital beds with a nurse and on-call doctor. I stayed in ours a couple of times for short illnesses. If I'd been really unwell I'd have been sent home.

Jo

I don't think it's harmful for older children, GCSE and A-Level years, especially since they typically get to go home quite often. I don't love it for younger secondary students and I do think it's bad for the pre-preps. It's certainly not for all children, but a 16yo can cope with it if they are motivated, for example if it's a specialist school and they really love the subject.

Boarding schools aren't terribly popular here in the USA but we do have some. A few lean wealthy, but others are more specialised, for example I know someone who went to Interlochen which is an arts school. Because of distance many children don't get to go home all semester which is tough. A few states have boarding schools for gifted children (usually in maths & science) and many students do go home on weekends. I also know a couple of people in the Foreign Service who had children board for high school so they would have stability and not have to worry if their parent suddenly got posted to Kazakhstan.

@BaklavaRocks i couldn’t do it with my child as I would miss them too much. But I know many people who went to boarding school (where I was a day pupil). Vast majority are in happy marriages, balanced, well educated people who live happy lives (at least as far as I can tell). I think it depends on the school and how much parental involvement there is alongside that. It’s not as simple as boarding means an emotional fuck up.

Either. My Mum picked me up and took me home if it was going to be longer than 24hrs. But there would be someone there 24/7 if you couldn’t go home. They were very kind to us when we were sick. There was a ‘sick bay’ room too.

@corkindigo you go to the san and see the school nurses and doctor

It can be either depending on how close your parents live.. they do contact them.
Mine lived an hour away so I was able to go home if I wanted but often I did not. You just got to go and lie down in your bed and we had a matron who would come check on you and bring you some tea and toast if you wanted some. She would call your parents if you asked or may decide to contact them herself.
Where I went you could call your parents if you wanted to as there was a phone on the wall in one if the halls for students to use at break times or in the evening, so you could have gotten hold of them yourself anyway.

I used to work for someone who sent both her kids to boarding school when they were 7/8. She did it because the same happened to her as a child. She never saw her kids at weekends, just school holidays. She was very emotionally stunted and had no close loving relationship with her own parents. Broke my heart that history would repeat itself. The thought of sending my kids away at the age of 7 and not seeing them for weeks at a time absolutely disgusted me.

When we were ill (1980’s) you stayed in the ‘San’ with Sister (ours was a Nurse in uniform). It was set up like a little hospital ward. God it sounds like another world now. No parents didn’t come and get you or anything. I don’t even remember phone calls when I was ill and in the San for a week. To be fair though Sister was lovely and there was ‘Nurse’ who stayed with you at night who was also very lovely.