When I visit my old boarding school, Moira House, a bubbly 15-year-old called Daisy bounds up to me in the dining room, trailing a gaggle of giggling girls behind her, and asks if I remember her mum, another old girl.

It turns out I do ­ her mother was head girl, after all ­ and Daisy is chuffed to bits. Then it's my turn to ask questions. Boarding, I ask, screwing up my face and lowering my voice, what's it like nowadays?

I get a big thumbs up. Daisy has been a weekly boarder at Moira House, an independent girls' school in Eastbourne, Sussex, for four years. Now 15, Daisy goes home after school on Friday, returning on Sunday night or Monday morning. Home is half an hour away, but her parents run their own international company and work long hours. She really likes boarding, "though I couldn't cope full time"; she calls school "a home from home".

At lights out later I join Yoyo Yeung, 11, from Hong Kong, and her Spanish roommate Carlotta, 12, who have just deposited their laundry somewhere downstairs. Yoyo has been a full-time boarder at Moira House, where a quarter of the 400 pupils board, for more than a year. Yoyo cuddles a rabbit, Carlotta a teddy, while the deputy housemistress reads them a bedtime story about Greek gods ­ not, I gather, a nightly occurrence, but an occasional treat.

On Monday nights only the two girls are joined by Hope, who is a flexi boarder, a system of pay-as-you-sleep which has revolutionised modern boarding, de-brutalising it for both parents and offspring who like the idea of separation ­ but not all of the time.

Two other factors ­ enlightened, child-focused pastoral care and the advent of laptops and mobiles ­ have also changed the culture of boarding schools.

Add to these the increase in overseas boarders, especially from Hong Kong and EU countries, and the Harry Potter effect, and it is perhaps not surprising that attendance has, despite the stigma once attached to sending your children away, steadied over the last six years after a 20-year decline, and now begun to rise.

According to the 2006 Independent Schools Census, last year saw an incremental increase (of less than 1 per cent) in boarding numbers. What is surprising is that the greatest uptake is among boys of prep-school age. The number of boys boarding at age 7 increased by 19.1 per cent from 2005 to 2006 and at 11 by 6.4 per cent, while the same figures for girls decreased.

So much for our child-focused, post-therapy age. It harks back to what many would consider a bygone era, when boys were traditionally packed off to boarding school at an earlier age than their sisters with an admonition to grin and bear it.

I was seven when I was sent away. Now, as a mother myself, I wouldn't countenance sending my boys off at that age. It would break my heart and I believe harden theirs. But many would. I ask Robert Taylor, head teacher of Ashdown House, a happy, spirited co-ed prep school in Forest Row, East Sussex, why anyone would, especially if they live relatively nearby, as 70 per cent of all boarding parents now do. Taylor asks me to picture a frazzled mother of three, frantically ferrying her young children about, including a toddler.

"She's got a 2.30 pick-up at the nursery, then she's got to get to the older child's school for 3.30, possibly get another child from somewhere else, then get one off to piano, another off to hockey. The children spend the whole time in mum's taxi. Then, later, they battle over homework or violin practice and after that she's got to get them to bed. It's like a war zone.

Here we have more time for the children." There are a thousand reasons why parents choose boarding school, including the time-honoured conviction that it is the best education on offer, but convenience has never been so high up on the list. When it comes to "lifestyle solutions", boarding is the ultimate consumer choice for working couples seeking to combine childcare and education. And the numbers add up, too. Day-school fees plus childcare costs can work out a more expensive option than boarding.

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