How depressing @Cardboardcut my experience is mainly with top girls boarding schools. Makes sense, all similar likely afflicted with same issues.
IME that’s why there are a significant minority with very serious mental health issues, often undiagnosed below the radar, in these institutions & schools can’t or are not interested in accommodating, NB: to said schools an ‘online wellness platform’ only ticks a box (and often suggests the obvious anyway). Budget cuts & purse strings being tightened means boarding housemasters etc have too much responsibility for not enough pay & being overstretched means very important balls inevitably dropped.
The heads often seem oblivious, not bothered, or asleep at the wheel, ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’ & IME the schools are turning a blind eye to revision boot camps etc for overseas pupils in hols who reinforce this over studying culture. These were not a ‘thing’ a few years ago & kids have to clear stuff out in boarding houses/rooms to accommodate. (Fair enough in long summer hols but disruptive in term time).
As you’ll prob know, In Asia often the ‘good class’ schools are effectively ‘rubber stamps’ and look like a luxury high status brand on your CV & all that this implies. Classes are often 30-40.
Here, the ‘real’ & ‘true’ learning happens in the enrichment centres & by the brilliant super tutor that teachers on the top floor of the shopping centre. Parents, often at great sacrifice to themselves, spend a thousand & even, sometimes ‘thousands’ a month on it. Sometimes that is nearly all their income.
Are we seeing that culture increasing here? Certainly, I do personally. It’s a very different landscape to 2015, for example, & there are far fewer UK boarders. Am I seeing parents with the most ££ in these schools having increasingly more soft power? In the past this definitely wasn’t so.
They seem reluctant to put fees up too, budgeting & accounts in some cases ‘off’ & badly managed. Some Indep schools, I think, are covering this effective shortfall & teacher pension change from own coffers & will need to find funds to do so.
Which leads to, in some cases accommodation being increasing grotty/substandard. As you or someone up thread said, parents won’t put up with that as in past.
Food budgets often covertly cut which means catering staff hard to find & food quality increasingly poor quality & badly prepared. This leads to increasing blind eyes turned to students ordering pretty consistent takeaways in some cases & places.
Fee increases would also help re: teachers salaries & perks. We want to reward excellent professionalism. Some teachers now even have to pay for food when free before. Charity initiatives at local state schools etc are to be applauded & very important BUT if time, teacher expertise & increasingly money is siphoned off here, will parents be pleased?