British boarding school and expats

[edgeofheaven]

I'm living overseas in Asia and have noticed that among expat families with secondary school aged children, it's mainly the British that send their DCs to boarding school back in the home country. Whereas other nationalities e.g. French, American, Australian either just send their DCs to international school using the home curriculum, or they relocate as a family back home for final years before university.

Is this just because Britain has such a strong history of boarding schools? I'm wondering if there are other cultural reasons that British expats feel it's more important to have their DCs study in the UK rather than at a British international school.

I was a child of expats sent back to board. This was in the 90s. The main reasons were:
The secondary provision locally at the time wasn’t very good;
Schools finished at 1pm and my parents worried I’d get increasingly bored as time went on. I couldn’t drive and there was no public transport to go and meet friends;
They wanted me to experience UK life and culture ahead of university.