Are boarding primary schools necessary?

Boarding schools; all who know me know this for me is a pet peeve. Especially for children less than 14 years. I make no claim to being an expert, all I am is a parent, a teacher and a concerned citizen expressing my considered opinion.

Today, my friend told me of a conversation she overheard of a woman touting the good attributes of sending her child to a boarding school. She was encouraging her friend to do the same. Her child is in pre-unit! I assume that makes her, at most, five-years-old. I question our sanity; that, one - boarding schools exist for children that young and two, they do because we send our children to them.

I agree there are dire circumstances that would make it impossible or dangerous, physically and psychologically, for a child to be at home. But that is not why most of us are sending our children out.

We send them away because they are not paying attention in school, because they are not serious enough to do better academically, because we need to work among other reasons. A colleague of mine told me she sent her child in class five to boarding school because she was always watching cable tv and using the Wi-Fi.

Fact is, our children need us to be there for them, especially during their formative years. I do not want my child to be taught the facts of life by her peers, a teacher whose loyalty is vested in a pay slip or worst still to navigate the vagaries of childhood and adolescence on her own.

I want to be an authority figure. What logical argument would I make, what moral leg would I stand on, when I see my child three months out of a year, where she fends for herself in an environment where she is a statistic, then expect her to respect my authority?

For the most part the reasons given for sending our children away, truly in my opinion, and I am well aware I may take flack for this, are simply selfish.

We don’t want to turn off the cable, how then would we keep up with the Kardashians? Or turn off the Wi-Fi, or take that extra time to ensure the homework is done, the syllabus is covered, the school report is relevant and their teacher has a name.

As a teacher, I urge you to give your children the attention they require now. Remember your window of influence is short. That masters degree, that promotion can wait, they, your children, cannot.