Charterhouse or Whitgift

[Paulinemay]

Our DS has been offered a place at both Charterhouse and Whitgift boarding schools and we are trying to decide which to go for. They are probably worlds apart, but we were wondering if one has an advantage over the other in terms of academic focus, school life and importantly the boarding school experience. Any info/advice anyone can offer will be much appreciated.

I would be wary of Whitgift (no experience, other than that I live nearby!) simply because I don't get the impression that it is set up as a boarding school eg by having boarding houses for each year group. Things may have changed from when it first started taking boarders, but the boarding facilities certainly didn't use to be very big, or impressive.

No experience but Charterhouse is an old established boarding school where as Whitgift is a day school that started taking boarders. Is your Ds coming from overseas? How old?

Many thanks for the replies. Our DS is 13 so going to Year 9 in September. He’s from London but been living abroad for the last year and half. I think our slight concern is there appears to be not very much on Charterhouse online, in terms of solid positive reviews. Whereas we’ve seen some fairly strong reviews on Whitgift. Charterhouse, apparently, is one of the top schools in the country, yet we are not seeing any glowing reviews, so we were just wondering…

Charterhouse definitely seems to be provoking discussion at the moment. They are very different schools with different intakes, you must have a view on which is better suited to your son from your visits, I would focus on the friendship/boarding aspect.

OP there is a new head starting at Charterhouse and I hear that he has done very well at his previous school so one can be hopeful.
I agree with others that although Charterhouse is predominantly a weekly boarding school it is still much more of a boarding school than Whitgift including having Saturday school That will make a real difference to your DS if you are living abroad.