The vast majority of parents in the UK swallow the usual nonsense about school being education, without the slightest questioning of the system at all.  Even worse are parents who see private boarding-schools as the 'gold standard of education', completely ignoring the wishes of their children, the vast majority of whom hate the idea of school, let alone living in one, sometimes very far from home and friends.  What continues to stagger me is that even the most intelligent, caring parents still cling to the propaganda and myths above the real wishes of their child.  This, to me, is bad parenting.
I have known only three pupils who relished being at boarding-school, and viewed it as some kind of cross between a leisure park and a place for free academic and sporting facilities.  Only three.  The rest of the people I have known or met who spent time at boarding-school, sometimes from the age of six, have told stories of misery, cruelty and loathing. 
It is illegal in the UK to abandon your children - unless you abandon them to a carpeted prison run by many dubious people.  Then abandonment is seen as a thoughtful and caring action.  This reveals how twisted thinking can be.  On top of being exiled to a place they don't want to be, most graduates of boarding-school I have spoken to, felt abandoned by the people who ostensibly loved them.
One friend of mine told me the story of his first day at boarding-school, at the age of 12.   I have met his parents and they are fine people and generally good parents.  However, they decided to send their son to boarding-school, a school only forty miles away from their home.  There was a local day school, which seemingly produced well-rounded and successful graduates, and where most of my friend's friends attended.  Incredibly, the parents bowed to pressure from family and friends, who fervently, but stupidly, believed that boarding-schools were better for 'educating' than any other type of school.
My friend told me how he sobbed all the way to the school, begging his parents not to consign him to the place.  All of them in tears, and deaf to his pleas, his mother and father said their unnecessary 'goodbyes' and drove off.  He said he felt as if he'd done something wrong to deserve this punishment.  Worse still, my friend kept begging his parents, over five 'horrible' years he was at the school, all to no avail.  Deaf to reality and submission to fantasy!  Very bad parenting!
Since the very rationale for board-schools has evaporated, it is time to abolish these anachronistic institutions once and for all.