We are sending our DS1 to boarding school next year if he gets selected - it's a selective Government school. I think considering your distance from school and the reputation to the one closest to you that it's a good idea you send her. Obviously becuase of distance it will be full time boarding? Yesterday DH was talking to a person he knows who sent their son to the same school this year and he said that he's (the boy) is still struggling with it a little and misses home a lot. Apparently the most of the girls and a few boys are still very homesick. He is only a weekly boarder too so he is home every weekend (as our son will be). I don't think it would necessarily matter at this stage whether you do co-ed or girls only. A woman I played netball with last year has sent both her boys away in year 9 to a school in Sydney and I asked her how they coped with it, and she said they were fine. She felt that they really needed the extra two years at home and it gave them time to mature a little kwim? But then when I spoke with the school itself, she said that they found it was an easier adjustment for the kids if they started in year 7 because all the kids in that year group was going through the same thing and they had a network of shared experiences to help them adjust, if that makes sense?

TBH, I don't know how I will cope. DS and I are very close and I will miss him like crazy. I think he will be fine though, obviously he will need time to adjust, but hes a very pragmatic type of person so he takes it all in his stride.