In two items earlier this year The Times reported concerns that some children are too readily taken into care and reminded readers about the benefits of boarding school for vulnerable children.
I have known three men who benefitted from time in state boarding schools. The parents of one of them had an itinerant occupation, another was taken from a broken home after the death of his mother and the third, also from a broken home, was saved from a developing interest in the local gang culture.
Respectively they became an Anglican priest, a teacher and cathedral organist, and a social worker. Each was sure that his life had been turned around at time when they could so easily have gone wrong. Sending a child to boarding school in these circumstances does not break up families, but relieves them from pressure and stress and provides a deal of protection for a child. Half of these schools no longer exist; they were closed some twenty years ago.
Directors of children’s services recently heard the schools minister tell them of the effectiveness of boarding schools in improving the social and educational outcomes of vulnerable children. Did they ask him how many new state boarding schools are to be provided or will they be content to depend on charitable provision by public schools?
There is another blog on a related topic dated Feb 15th 2017.