With en-suite bathrooms, comfy beds and 24-hour care, boarding schools have reinvented themselves for a new generation, says Charlotte Phillips
In recent years, critics have been quick to predict the demise of boarding schools. They’re out of touch and old fashioned, they argue, no longer what parents want for their children. Yet, as the Independent School Council?s 2017 Census shows, there?s still an awful lot of boarding going on. Of the 522,879 pupils at ISC schools, a hefty 13.4% (just over 70,000) are boarders.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the traditional approach that boarding offers is one of the reasons for its enduring appeal.
Wraparound care
Schools practically invented the concept and it?s bang up-to-date when it comes to supporting dual-income parents beset with long working hours. Then there?s schools? reassuring approach to technology. Used appropriately in lessons, it?s an educational godsend. In today?s classrooms you can?t move for iPad-enabled lessons and whiteboard wonderfulness. Out of hours, however, it can give children access to some of the less loveable aspects of human nature.
General rules apply
And it?s here that boarding schools come into their own, setting out rules that children obey as a matter of course, but wouldn?t necessarily countenance from their own parents.
At Farleigh School, Hampshire, for example, the rule is no phones at all. Even overseas pupils hand their mobiles in at the beginning of term. While children can send ema...