The choice to go to boarding school

[davewitley]

David:

> > And of those, I imagine only a tiny minority have any say in the 
> > matter.  For parents collectively, it may be an opportunity; for 
> > children individually, they go because they have to, or don't 
> > because they can't.

Shaun:

> Actually, of people I know who went to such schools - and it's 
> quite a number - the significant majority did have some say. Some 
> parents did just decide unilaterally, but really not that many.

Interesting.

When I wrote the above I was chiefly thinking of the case where the 
parents' choice is sharply constrained, too.   For example, 
diplomats, missionaries, and others whose jobs cause them to live 
abroad for periods too short to take their kids with them, too long 
for them to be educated locally at a home base.

I think that it is a very lucky parent who can afford to offer any 
kind of choice to their child, whether boarding, day school or home 
ed.  We could certainly not afford to send our children to anything 
other than state schools and were not competent (or confident enough 
of our ongoing sanity) to home-school.  Within the state system (in 
England), there is theoretically some choice, but this is largely 
illusory, as pretty well all parents in a given locality will favour 
the same school (and policies put forward by the main parties here 
to broaden choice will not affect this).

David