Genuine question- why boarding school?

[NCTDN]

I'm not being horrible but genuinely intrigued. I never had the option and neither have my children, so clueless.
What are your reasons for choosing going to boarding school rather than a private day school?

Because my DS needed more than we could offer - and we could offer A LOT and would make the sacrifices to offer more but ultimately, we had to accept that whatever we offered would never be enough. Boarding school gave him the independence he needed in a way that kept him safe. If enabled him to become responsible. In short, it saved him from himself and I'm forever grateful for making him the young man he has become. It was a sacrifice I'm glad I made.

What about you, OP? Not being horrible or anything, but do you ever worry about restricting options for DC?

Well what an eye opener! I genuinely never knew state boarding schools existed. There’s one quite near me as well but I always thought it was totally fee paying.
Its interesting looking at the list that seven are boys schools but the rest are mixed and there’s no girls schools
Without a doubt, if I had the money my children would have gone to private school but I’m really lucky that they’re both well motivated, academic and holding their own against university peers who were privately educated.

Yes there are two state boarding schools relatively near us and they are massively oversubscribed for day places as they are so good. You have to live practically next door to stand a chance. I don’t know how much competition there is for boarding places. They’re brilliant schools though.

I saw Royal Alexandra & Albert advertising the other day. They are a state boarding school in Surrey, about 1/3 military families. Boarding fees are 7k a term but if you are military you only pay 10% of that. Also being a state school they are vat exempt.

Wow £700 for a term boarding ?

Military- she’s already on her 5th school age 12 so boarding has allowed her to settle.

Sports opportunities.

Loves the social side.

Meets lots of children from different places with different cultures.

Because I have a dependent with severe MH challenges at home and it’s safer for my child to stay at school in the week. Plus they have already witnessed plenty and we wanted them to have a “normal” teen experience with peers rather than the experience at home full time.

DD’s boarding school here in the US cost from $0 to $9k a year depending on family income.

It’s the highest achieving school in our state, academically.

They accept approximately 90% of applicants.

The charity that supported us while he was at prep decided to support us through to A levels. (although he didn't stay to do his A Levels). It was their suggestion that he board, and we were happy to go with it.

Yes, for military families.
Looks like military are very heavily subsidised by non military. Boarding fees of £7k a term (just for the living expenses, not including any education) are actually really high.

Ehat v the parents did, so naturally that's what the DCs will do? Expected to keep family tradition going?

This was me as a child. I used to get the boarding school leaflets from horse and pony magazine and hand them to my parents. I never got to go to boarding (very much state school only) but as a teen arguing with my siblings it was such a dream.
looking back I had a great childhood but it’s lovely to hear your child is living my dreams haha,glad they are happy.

For state boarding the military gets a government grant which covers the remaining 90-92%. So it is not subsidised by non-military families.

On the other hand many independent boarding schools (many independent schools generally) offer a general fee remission for military families in addition to the government Continuity of Education Allowance.

Of course they are subsidised by other parents.

A) Where does “government grant” comes from? Taxpayers, 99.7% of them whom are not military, and 99% of whom don’t send their kids to boarding school.

B) There are two types of “ten percenter” school (which guarantee military parents will only pay ten percent of fees). The first kind, which includes top public boarding schools like Sherborne and Cheltenham, tell military parents they will only have to pay 10% of full fees regardless of what the CEA is (as the CEA is a set amount which doesn’t vary according to how expensive the school is). The gap between full fees and CEA+10% is effectively subsidised by parents who do pay full fees.

The second kind of ten percenter is the RAAS model which uses CEA as the basis to set fees for everyone. Ie full fees = CEA x 100/90, regardless of what the fees actually need to be to cover costs (or what full fee paying parents might pay elsewhere for the same education), and military pays 10% of that. That is why the RAAS termly boarding fees appear so high for a state school. At my DS’s (private school) the % of the termly fee that is “boarding” is 35%: elsewhere near here it tends to vary between 30-35%. On that basis, the implied full annual fee for RAAS (if it were a private boarding school, ie 7kx100/30x3) would be £63k. That would make one of the most expensive schools in the country. Particularly when you consider that Eton also costs £63k a year but that includes 20% VAT. RAAS pays no VAT.
As RAAS is not offering the same level of education and facilities as an Eton or Millfield, where is the top dollar that non military boarding parents are paying actually going? Answer: it’s subsidising everyone else.

@stickystick are the boarding fees also used to cross-subsidise the actual education, to top up the government £8k per student funding?

Ie part of that boarding fee would effectively be a day fee top-up (and subsidises day pupils), but they have to pretend it isn't, since state boarding schools aren't allowed to charge for non-boarding costs.

I haven't looked into it at all, but assumed that was probably the case.

I'm in New England too - I've never heard of state/public boarding schools - how did I miss that? Would you mind pming me the school/state? I'm fascinated - and wonder why this was never part of the "next schools" conversation in middle school.

I would have possibly considered boarding school for high school for mine - especially if they had a time consuming sport/interest. They went to private day - although actually one went as a day student to a private boarding/day. I knew several kids who did this and more or less lived at the boarding school - had dinner there, hung with friends doing homework, came home to bed.

@strawberrybubblegum
It isn’t supposed to happen but there is a lot of grey area. Eg staffing - people employed to work as boarding houseparents will also teach day pupils. Various facilities will be used at the weekends by boarders but also by day pupils during the week. Inevitable really.

It's a business model.

At my DS's school the premium for boarding (i.e. the difference between the boarding and day school fees) in Years 5 and 6 is around 2000 per term, but in Years 7 and 8 it jumps up to 4000 per term. There is no difference in the boarding provision, so I can only imagine that school considers Year 7 to be the point where the price of school fees becomes "inelastic" so an increase in fees will not significantly impact the number of families prepared to pay those fees.

The fees paid by Year 7 and 8 boarding families must be subsidising either the boarding costs of younger children, the teaching costs of children generally, or a combination of the two.

@tachetastic
Kind of. Demand for Y5&6 boarding at many schools is much lower than for Y7&8, and Y5&6 are much more likely to go home for some or all of the weekends. Hence some reduce the fees to lure punters in rather than letting them go elsewhere. It’s not the case everywhere though. Where DS is, all prep boarding fees are the same regardless of what year you are.

I’d assume this school wasn’t mentioned as an option because you’re probably out of state, and the fees are much higher for out of state students, plus the distance would just be so far. It’s almost as far north in Maine as you can get. It’s also tiny and tends to go under the radar generally.

Ok. got it once you mentioned Maine.

But there really isn't a public boarding school option in New England. This is a very niche state school for Maine.

Yes - we were very lucky to have it as an option, which is yet another reason I’m so baffled when people judge us for letting our daughter go there. It was really too good an opportunity to pass up.

My best friend in my first job had boarded. She had a severely disabled sibling who had incredibly high medical needs. Her parents didn’t feel being a home that was more like a hospital, with carers 4+ times a day and most nights sleep disrupted, frequent ambulance visits etc would give her the best life, so they sent her to board and have a ‘normal’ life.

She had struggled at times with boarding, but understood the choice her parents made and broadly thought it was the right one.

Just randomly clicked on this thread. Really interesting to hear all the different reasons children go to boarding school. I can imagine that especially at secondary age, they love the social aspect!