Princess Kate doesnt want her children to go to same-sex boarding schools

Back in September, the news began spilling out. The Princess of Wales was skipping out on the big trip to Singapore for this year’s Earthshot Prize ceremony. The palace staggered around, trying to figure out a suitable lie for why Kate didn’t go to New York with her husband and then was apparently refusing to go to Singapore. The lie ended up being “Prince George has to sit for an important exam and Kate wanted to be there to help him.” There were other stories though, about Kate being a “reluctant traveler,” stories which were hilariously refuted as everyone insisted that no, George’s exam is so, so important. Basically, George was taking a standardized placement exam on his road to eventually go to Eton. Only we’ve heard many times that Kate doesn’t want to send George to any boarding school, and she would prefer to send him to her co-ed alma mater Marlborough. Well, that’s what Richard Eden’s recent column was about:

The Princess of Wales is so committed to her children’s education that she stayed at home while Prince William was in Singapore for his Earthshot Prize awards earlier this month so she could support Prince George as he prepared for school exams. Now, I hear, the couple face a dilemma over where to send their elder son for the next stage of his education.

‘Catherine is not a fan of single-sex schools,’ a friend of her family, the Middletons, tells me. ‘She did not enjoy her time at Downe House, but loved it at Marlborough College.’

It is said that Kate Middleton was the target of bullies at Downe House, an all-girls boarding school in Berkshire where she endured two miserable terms when she was a teenager. She was delighted to move to Marlborough College, a co-educational boarding school in Wiltshire, where she excelled in the classroom as well as on the sports field before she went on to St Andrews University, where she met Prince William.

Last month, I disclosed that Catherine had made a secret return visit to her beloved alma mater.

‘Catherine was here the other day,’ a source at the £46,995-per-year boarding college in Wiltshire told me. ‘It’s been the talk of the school.’

Parents speculate that the Princess may be thinking about sending her elder son, Prince George, to Marlborough, where her sister, Pippa, and brother, James, were also pupils. Princess Eugenie, Samantha Cameron and comedian Jack Whitehall are among its other alumni. George, aged ten, is in Year 6 at Lambrook prep school in Berkshire, but was recently spotted looking around Eton College with his family ahead of a potential move there.

[From The Daily Mail]

I honestly wonder why Eden even bothered with this? We’ve been hearing variations of this for months, if not years. The new wrinkle is that Kate is wary of same-sex education, while previously she had qualms about boarding schools in general. I’ve always said that Kate got “her way” on the kids’ education in their early years (heh) because the institution would make her send the kids away by their teen years. William clearly wants his sons to go to Eton, which is a guarantee that they will go to Eton. Kate will probably get her way with Charlotte though – I bet Charlotte ends up going to Marlborough, and not as a boarder.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.

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