Boarding schools

Are boarding schools good or bad for children? Has the absence of their parents an influence on their further life? These are questions we can ask ourselves when we think about the concept of sending kids to boarding schools. Boarding schools have always been a point of argument and they always will be, but in the past few years there have been some developments that are rather disturbing.

There can be two reasons to send your kid to boarding school: you don’t have enough time as a parent to take care of your child or the school/day care is too far away from home. As for the first reason, I can’t help to think that these parents should have thought about this before they got kids. As for the second reason, it depends on the age of the kids wether the reason is acceptable or not. It’s in my opinion that this reason is acceptable for kids who attend secondary school, but not for kids who go to day care or primary school. The differences  in quality between secondary schools can be a good reason to send your kid to a school that’s far away from home. The differences between day cares or primary schools aren’t that big and there  are more schools to choose from, so I don’t see why you should send your kid to a school far away from home.

It should already be clear that I’m not a huge fan of boarding schools for baby’s or young children. However, as Karlien Dhondt points out, it can happen that boarding school is in the best interest of the kids. This would be the case if there are serious reasons to doubt that the parents are able to take care of their children properly.

Annelies Troch

http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=GPN2TVPTU
http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=GPN2TVPU8