For the past two years or so, Prince William and Kate’s private fight over their children’s education has spilled out into the public sphere. Kate has done everything she can to publicly convince William that their kids need to go to co-ed schools, so that they can all go to the same school. She does not like boarding schools and she doesn’t want Prince George to go to an all-boy school like Eton. For years, Kate has been touring other schools and trying to figure out a way to ensure that George will not go to Eton, which is William’s alma mater. Last year, she reportedly “gave in” to Eton, but then just a few months ago, she had a change of heart and it’s clear that Kate and William are still fighting about this. Well, here’s an update from the Mail’s Richard Eden:

Choosing a secondary school can be stressful for any parent, but it’s even more challenging when your son is our future head of state. I hear that Prince George visited Eton College before the boarding school broke up for the Easter holidays to see where he would stay if he goes to his father’s alma mater next year.

‘It’s the talk of the school, and of the parents,’ a source close to the Berkshire college tells me.
Although George, who turns 12 in July, might be expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and attend £63,000-per-year Eton, it remains unclear if he will do so. While Prince William thrived there, his brother, Prince Harry, discovered that it was the wrong choice for him. Harry wrote in his memoirs, Spare, about his struggles at the school, which he left with a D in A-level geography and a B in art, bypassing university to head straight to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as an officer cadet. Eton, he said, was ‘heaven for brilliant boys, it could thus only be purgatory for one very unbrilliant boy’.

There has been speculation that George could follow the example of his mother, the Princess of Wales, and her siblings, Pippa Matthews and James Middleton, and attend Marlborough College, the Wiltshire boarding school where annual fees are £59,000. Unlike Eton, Marlborough is co-educational.

I understand that Eton is the preferred choice. It would be highly convenient as William, Catherine and their three children live mainly at Adelaide Cottage in Windsor Home Park, which is just a short walk away.

As might be expected, George’s parents have been spotted at a number of potential choices, including Highgate School in north London. Catherine was reported to be attracted to Highgate because it has a ‘world-class’ drama department. However, it would seem an unlikely choice as it is 30 miles from Windsor and commuting across the capital could take an hour each way.

George has four terms left at Lambrook School, in the Berkshire countryside, where his sister, Princess Charlotte, aged nine, and Prince Louis, six, are also day pupils.

[From The Daily Mail]

This is not the first time George has been taken to Eton to look things over, and it’s clear that William really believes Eton will be good for George. William was reportedly very happy at Eton, and he still has many friends from his Eton days, and I could absolutely see how William would want the same thing for George. Plus, I think the establishment/royal machine really doesn’t care for Kate’s insistence on having her kids at home as long as possible. They view boarding schools as a necessary part of kids growing up and detaching from their parents (and Kate has never detached from her parents). Still, it’s interesting that Kate keeps touring all of these other schools and she keeps leaking this stuff.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.