What value do you get with a boarding school?

[25Green]

With boarding fees being more or less double off a good day school. What do you get at boarding (except for the boarding obviously) for the extra money?

We have a very good day school on our doorstep but DS may want to go boarding. Just trying to figure out if it’s worth the financial pressure!!

@Gruelle out of interest….i see you’ve written a lot of words but I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. I’ve never boarded or grown up in that environment.
I can’t quite understand the benefits

You're effectively paying for food, rent, laundry, overheads plus the staff it takes to support all of that and the staff to care for and parent your kids

I suspect this is very variable. Key thing is the dc wants to board and you are willing to bring them home to a day school if it goes pearshaped.
Costs money to board as obviously it costs money to house, feed, launder, supervise anyone!
value is not financial but in what the dc gets out of the experience, these are likely to be a mixture of

• social benefits
• academic (particular subjects, help, stretch, dedicated prep time, resource access etc)
• Range of extracurricular (unavoidable at boarding school so at least in termtime you avoid the endless mindless screentime it is hard to avoid at home) - typically wide range of options, loads more than I could provide/organise
• elements of independence
• sometimes benefits of family members not being together so much - depends on dynamics and if you do better with smaller bits of quality time
• can be benefits to other family members if a day school would put constraints on others eg school runs which negatively impacts On a parent or sibling

I suspect there’s a wider appeal than the stereotypes acknowledge …

This isn’t the OP’s situation, perhaps - but imagine a sole parent, working full time or caring for another dependent family member. So lacking all or some of the energy, time, capacity, money, for endless ferrying of an energetic teenager to extracurricular or social stuff. Now imagine them with a 90 or 100% bursary to a full boarding school. (There would still be a relentless round of coming and going from school - averaging every couple of weeks, but it would be so much easier for the parent and so much better for the child. Assuming boarding suited that particular child.)

Or imagine the two working parents (with a child bursting with intellectual potential and a need for broader horizons) who simply cannot stretch to the gazillion ££ house in the leafy comp catchment. Or who have limited access to the particular activity their child excels at - whether that’s cricket or organ playing or directing musicals. If the best school for that is two or three hours away, why wouldn’t they jump at it if it would suit their child, and they are organised enough to successfully apply for a bursary.

So many people who make disparaging noises simply have either no knowledge whatsoever or cannot imagine lives with different needs and circumstances to their own.

I suspect this is one of those threads where the pro boarding posters refuse to believe that anybody not so enamoured has any knowledge or experience of the subject. Which is a little tedious.

Picking bits out of people's posts and making judgmental comments to/about them on a board dedicated to discussing boarding schools, for the users of boarding schools, is also pretty tedious.

@Legoninjago1 So wholly positive comments only?

@CurlewKate This is a board for people looking for advice and information on boarding schools. I cannot begin to imagine what would motivate someone clearly opposed to all forms of boarding spending so much time here, perhaps apart from boredom.

You are of course fully entitled to your opinions on the matter of boarding. But one would hope you would also offer us the same courtesy and allow us to discuss matters of interest to us without your running moral commentary.

@DornfordYates I mm not sure 3 posts counts as a running commentary. And I am
in the unusual positron of knowing a lot about boarding schools in several contexts. People come on here for information-and an echo chamber is never a useful research source. It just tends to reflect back received wisdom. I am not wholly opposed to boarding- it's just a more complicated an nuanced situation than some believe.

We have the same trouble on the Black MN board … People just can’t believe it’s not for them. Stamp all over every conversation …

@Gruelle the difference, I suspect, is that there aren't people looking for information about whether they should choose to be black or not.

Ah well, thank you so much for explaining Black MN for me. 🤷🏾‍♀️

I too am in the not at all unusual position of knowing a lot about boarding schools in several contexts - and as you can see, I have pointed out that it might not always be the best choice.

Why not start your own thread where you can snipe at boarding parents to your heart’s content?

@25Green if you're looking for less argumentative discussions of boarding pros/cons from a wide variety of parents, you might browse the Prep School Admissions and Prep School Parents subforums in the College Confidential forums (it's an American site, so "prep school" refers to independent secondary schools). They obviously won't be a source for info about specific UK schools, but there's a good spread of opinions on/experiences with boarding. Plus it's generally a much less argumentative place than this one😂 Boarding doesn't have the same cultural significance/history in the US so most parents on that forum seem to come at it from a relatively neutral position just looking for the right option for each of their children.

If a parent said they'd never consider boarding for their DC regardless of how perfect of a fit the school was otherwise, I'd never suggest it again or think negatively of them as parents. In my experience it can be a great option for some kids in some families and totally wrong for others; growing up and parenting is rarely one-size-fits-all.

@RedPanda2022 he says he wants to board but we also realise that the reality of boarding is not always as glamorous as he might think it is. Thanks for feeding back.

@Gruelle thank you for taking the time to reply to me. Due to the further assessments and interviews due to come up in the next few months, it will give us all time to be able to see the schools again. Thing with having children you never quite know what journey they are going to take you on! This is one we never expected but hey ho.