Reading the thread about American-isms vs. British-isms, one reason for education related differences is the fact that American secondary education is almost entirely day-school, boarding schools are relatively rare. (the only one I can think of is in my hometown) So, do most (middle-class and above) British kids go to boarding school?
No.
And most independent schools are day schools - boarding schools form only a very small subset of independent schools so the figure will be much lower than 7%. But many ordinary day state schools (that everyone goes to) use similar set ups to boarding schools eg dividing the pupils into Houses etc
You should be able to think of a lot more. There are a bunch of famous private American boarding schools and even a few state boarding schools for gifted kids plus many religious ones. There are a bunch of them in New England but they exist elsewhere too. I count close to 300 secondary boarding schools in the U.S. according to this Wikipedia list with links. Some of those are based on the British model. I don’t know how many there are in England in total but there are only about 100 listed in the same article above. I don’t want to add up class sizes for all these schools but it isn’t clear that there is a big difference between U.S. and British boarding school numbers. The vast majority of students go to day schools but there are a large number of boarding schools of lots of different types for those that want to go (or be sent to) boarding schools.
I remember reading that before Harry Potter, UK boarding schools were really down to the super-famous upper crusty prep schools (which we have in the US, like Phillips-Exeter & Phillips-Andover) and certain schools for particular needs (schools for the deaf, schools for troubled youth, special arts academies) all of which we also have in the US. However after HP took off there was a renewed interest in “ordinary middle of the road” boarding schools which brought them back from the brink. This article reports that, prior to HP, there had been a 10-year decline in UK boarding-school enrollments, and also, that the phenomenon was not marked in the US.
Shagnasty the US has 6x the population of England, so I think those numbers suggest that on a per capita basis, the UK has twice as many boarding schools.
I think some of the upper-crust boarding schools (both in the US and the UK) attract international students, so the per capita count is less relevant.
Right. The per capita rate for domestic students who attend boarding schools is part of what is missing and that isn’t obvious from any information I have seen and is probably hard to calculate in general. It is pretty rare in the U.S. but my home state of Louisiana has a state boarding school that is mostly free. I was offered a spot and knew several people that went. I have a few friends that went to the upper crust boarding schools like Andover and Phillips Exeter as well. I would guess that way less than 1% of secondary students attend boarding school in the U.S. but we don’t know the real numbers for Britain either. Lots of those that go to the expensive ones are from wealthy foreign families.
I live in Australia so slightly off topic … but many of the students attending Australian boarding schools are those who live in country areas or international students … doesn’t the USA have a similar issue with country schools not being to the same standards as city schools?
This reminds me of a question I have about British boarding schools: do the kids simply walk out in front of cars with the god-like expectation that drivers will know they’re important enough to stop for, or is that just the Phillips kids? The kids at Phillips-Andover seem more aware of traffic, but I’m utterly shocked that kids from Phillips-Exeter aren’t run over on a regular basis.
Not quite. Rural general purpose boarding schools used to be alot more common, but no so much anymore now that transportation has gotten better and population density has gone up. I think there a few left in Alaska and I know there’s on in Oregon.
There are also still a few “one room schoolhouses” in the U.S. where rural kids get bussed some distance and there are only 20 or 30 kids in the whole school. The one in the Northwest Angle in Minnesota has as many as TWELVE students (I think the kids get bussed into Warroad, 65 miles away, for high school).
There are a bunch of tiny and unusual public schools in the U.S. if you look around the really rural areas. There are still some one-room schoolhouses or a similar idea in Northern New England in states like Vermont and Maine. There are also small islands especially off of Maine that have seasonal tourism but a very small year-round population with only a few kids and they have accommodations for them.
My cousins who aren’t all that old grew up in the mountains of Colorado in the middle of nowhere and got most of their schooling through a hybrid of homeschooling and public schooling lessons taught over the radio. The buses picked them up and drove them 90 minutes one way to take the major tests at the physical school. My home state of Louisiana had some really tiny schools for the cajun and swamp rat kids and even a few school boats to pick to take them there. The states generally have to provide an education for kids even when they live in unusual places so you end up with lots of weird contingency plans for the outliers.
In answer to the OP, boarding schools are still very much the reserve of the very wealthy, aside from the few scholarship cases – attending costs in the region of £20,000 pa (what’s that in dollars these days, $30k? $35k?), and even then it isn’t ‘the norm’. Imagine if you had 2, 3 or more kids, and you can see how financially it’s prohibitive for even most middle-class people.
‘Middle-class’ is an extremely broad category, and the majority of middle class kids will still go to either state schools or independent day schools.
There was a fashion amongst the wealthier girls, when I was a teenager attending an independent day school in the 80s, to go to a boarding school in the sixth form – the sixth form is two years of study you do after age 16, which is optional (i.e., you can leave school at 16 if you like). This was mostly because some of the big famous boys’ boarding schools started allowing girls to attend in the sixth form, and I half suspect my friends went for the excitement of living away from home and snogging boys than for any desire for a better education. They certainly did snog a lot of boys.
Ha ha, it’s not something I’ve noticed, but it wouldn’t surprise me. It reminds me of something my girlfriend once said about the university degree she took – she took Land Management at one of the few unis that did it (Land Management leads to a career as a Chartered Surveyor, a very ‘posh’ career). Most people on her course came from boarding schools and she remembers very clearly how hugely confident they were – coming from a fairly crappy state school herself, she found them very intimidating. I’m sure it’s a characteristic fairly common to the over-privileged, but there does seem to be something they put in the water at boarding schools. These institutions certainly set themselves up as the training ground for business and political leaders of the future.
I posted an Ask The thread a while back, my son goes to boarding school in Australia. Although we live in Sydney he goes to a rural school, and he loves it. I wouldn’t say a majority of kids go to one, though. Lots of very rural kids do.
I taught at a private boarding school in Switzerland.
It was a four year American prep school (high school), and most of the students were kids who intended to go on to ivy league colleges in the US. They come from practically every country in the world, including the US and UK.
I just checked and the current price for room, board and tuition is $68,000 per year.
The people who send their kids there can well afford it.
The quality of the education is excellent; small classes, great teachers and tough curriculum. You don’t keep your grade point up, you’re outta there! The guys at that school have to wear dress slacks, dress shirts and ties to class, the girls have to wear a dress and blouse, or business attire. Jeans are only allowed on weekends.
Most of those kids do indeed go on to prestigious universities around the world.
BTW, the kids absolutely love that school and you can tell when you walk through the campus.
So, although this type of school might be a dying breed, there is still a niche market and proven success rate.
That depends on your definition of ‘middle-class’? British usage is tending (quickly) towards the American, but only a few decades ago it meant independently wealthy without being a member of the (literal) aristocracy. A couple of generations working for a living, even if in the law or medicine, would take you out of the ‘middle class’, unless of course you could maintain middle-class standards, such as sending your children to boarding school, and employing some servants.
yep, this one
Located fairly near to where I live, my teenage son competes with them in HS football. Their school district covers more area than the state of Connecticut, but is rather sparsly populated. In 2008 they graduated 24 students from the high school, but in terms of quality education, they have a 100% graduation rate. They’re a powerhouse on the football field, because due to their unique situation they’re allowed (unfairly, I think) to recruit students from neighboring districts and they usually go for the athletes.
SS
Keep in mind the phrase “middle class”, itself–in terms of who belongs to it–is highly debatable; the owner of a highly successful small business who clears 200K after paying all expenses including employees’ wages and benefits, and the lobby receptionist who works there may both consider themselves middle class. Just saying.
The school my brother went to, in the UK, was a state run school (still is, just checked the website) which offered some boarding places, but was mainly for day students. The school’s website refers to it as ‘one of only 34 state boarding schools in the UK’, so it’s not unique.
It’s about £8000 a year, so cheaper than many. The school was free for day students, like my brother.
So far as I remember, most of the boarders were kids who’s parents travelled a lot for work, or who lived overseas in… interesting… places.
It has an entrance exam, which has a lower passing score for boarders, and I do recall one of his friends boarding despite living only a few streets away from the school, as otherwise he would have failed the entrance exam. Weird system if you think about it.
Other than them, the only boarding school pupil I knew at a different school -he used to stay with a friend’s neighbours for holidays- was a kid who was orphaned, and who’s uncle had paid his tuition in order to get out of looking after him. Was like something out of a Charles Dickens novel…
That is insanely expensive.