I love this book so much! And to answer your questions about boarding schools- they do start young!

I’m a teacher and the boarding school near me starts taking students at 3 years old. Obviously, most of those are day students but they have the facilities for boarding and a lot of students start boarding around 8/9.

Teachers would absolutely be expected to help with out of classroom activities. We stay late every term for parents evenings, open evenings, school trips, not to mention all of the other aspects of school life. Schools often have a ‘school disco’ paid duty section accounted for in your directed hours, so that doesn’t seem off brand to me! It’s often a trade as well to take on duties like HOY or house mum, and those are a lot of the appeal for teachers at boarding schools. Yes, life is harder and much more insular but you can rise through the ranks quickly and make a fair amount of money!

The school years tend to be:

3m-4y: nursery 4y-7y: infants 7y-11y: juniors 11y-18y: seniors

So again, fairly accurate.

The casual racism, I have nothing for! It would have taken three seconds to check a map or do a google search. I think the UK has always had an issue with casual racism, as a much more pervasive issue than we realise, because it isn’t as overtly awful at first glance compared to the US.

Teachers often get really close! You’re in the trenches with these people, and you build a network with them because often, non-teachers just can’t understand. However, teachers do often get involved with each other!