What's life like when your kids go to private school?

[redjumper]

My 3 children are only young at the moment, at a state primary school. I'm just thinking about the future, we are thinking about private schooling from year 7 in York.

Some of the things on my mind are how they'll manage with the long school day - 8.30 to 5.30 with a 45 minute commute too, plus school on Saturday. Will they be away from home too long?
But on the other hand, the long holidays as it looks like they are basically off school for 4 months in the year. What do they do with themselves all that time?

It's hard to picture what life will be like, especially as they are only young at the moment so very reliant on me still. I guess I'm worried that the separation will be hard for us both but then maybe I've not got a realistic view of life with teenagers anyway. Any thoughts would be really helpful, thank you.

Mrsmuddlepies. Yes, more companies are doing this. The sector I work in is doing this in the attempt to increase diversity in general. Although the odd bias still slips through. My husband's friend admitted recently he recruited someone from the same public school he attended who wouldn't have made it through their recruitment process if their CV "had landed on someone else's desk". But it does work the other way as I would say I have favoured state school pupils when recruiting in the past.

Increasingly, however, there is a push to broaden access to jobs in certain sectors dominated previously by former public / private school pupils much to some (not all) independent school parents' horror (I hear it at my DC's indie)

OP, to bring it back, re Sat school. Bootham (and Peters) have Sat school. Bootham finish around 12:25. Kids can stay for lunch if they want. Parents can join them. Sports matches are in The afternoon if child is in a team, but may not be every week. Not sure if they do this every year but Y7 have PE in the last period, so they don’t have to change if they then have a match, and it doesn’t feel like spending the whole morning doing ‘lessons’.
Peters finish at 3:45 and have PE/matches in the afternoon I believe.
We were taking to local football training before Sat school, so we treat that as getting some adult time back. There is usually a parents ‘thing’ on at the school first thing on Sat morning so we go to that, then coffee in town, then lunch at the school - it’s peace time! Most of the time the kids have lunch together and so do the parents!
If you have more than one child then Sat am becomes time to spend on the younger ones and not having to be in 3 places at once!