Boarding school

A boarding school is a school where some or all students not only study but also live, amongst their peers but away from their home and family. The word 'boarding' is probably a corruption of the phrase 'board and lodging', meaning meals and bed. Many famous UK public schools are boarding schools for ages 13 to 18.

Pupils may be sent to boarding schools at any age between two and eighteen; the amount of time spent in boarding school also varies considerably, from a brief period to more than 12 years, in one or two schools. There are any number of different types of boarding schools, from nursery or Kindergarten boarding schools, through "Boarding prep" schools for the age group 9 to 12, to senior schools.

Boarding school description

Typical UK boarding school characteristics

The term boarding school often refers to classic British boarding school, and most boarding schools around the world are modelled on the classic British boarding school. It is of the essence of such schools that they are entirely free to make all their own educational and other arrangements, so this can only be an illustration of the characteristics of a modern UK public school.

A typical modern fee-charging public school has several separate residential houses, and classrooms and facilities allotted to different groups of pupils and activities throughout the day. Many boarding schools are self-contained, while others like Eton and Westminster have buildings and grounds in various streets in the neighbourhood of the school. Pupils generally need permission to go outside defined school bounds; they may be allowed to go out locally at certain times.

A number of senior teaching staff are appointed as housemasters or housemistresses, each of whom takes quasi-parental responsibility for some 50 pupils resident in their house, at all times but particularly outside school hours. Each may be assisted in the domestic management of the house by a housekeeper often known as matron, and by a house tutor for academic matters, often providing staff of each sex. Nevertheless, older pupils are often unsupervised, and a system of monitors or prefects gives limited authority to senior pupils. Houses readily develop distinctive characters, and a healthy rivalry between houses is often encouraged in sporting prowess. See also House system.

The house will include study-bedrooms or dormitories where pupils may share sleeping quarters, a dining-room or refectory where pupils take meals at fixed times, a library or hall where pupils who do not have their own studies do their homework, and bathrooms, etc. It may also have common-rooms for television and relaxation, facilities for coffee and snacks, cycle sheds, etc. (Any facilities may be shared between houses.)

Each pupil has an individual subject timetable, which at first while he is young allows little discretion. Pupils of all houses and non-boarders are taught together in school hours; but boarding pupils' activities extend well outside school hours and a period for homework, with additional sports, clubs and societies (e.g. amateur dramatics, or political & literary speakers or debates}, or excursions (to performances, shopping or perhaps a school dance), until lights-out. As well as the usual academic facilities such as classrooms and laboratories, a boarding school may also provide a sanitorium, hall and chapel; recreational facilities such as boats, squash courts, a swimming pool, gymnasium, gardens and playing fields; a theatre, music rooms, an art studio, workshops, computer facilities and so on. These activities may be taught and perhaps examined, or may be made available as pastimes. Day-pupils may often stay on after school to use these facilities.

Most boarding schools have three terms a year, averaging about twelve weeks each, with a few days' half-term holiday during which pupils are expected to go home. There will be several exeats or weekends when pupils may go home in each half of the term. Boarding pupils nowadays often go to school within easy travelling distance of their homes, and so may see their families frequently.

Other types of boarding schools

Boarding schools are a form of residential school; however, not all residential schools are "classic" boarding schools. Other forms of residential schools include:

• Residential schools for students with Special Educational Needs, who may or may not be disabled
• Specialist schools, such as choir schools or stage schools
• Colleges and universities with residence halls (these are not described as boarding schools in British English)
• The Israeli kibbutzim, where children stay and get educated in a commune, but also have everyday contact with their parents at specified hours.

Some schools are semi-boarding schools (part day school and part boarding school). These schools take in some students as boarders and other students as semi-boarders, who would only attend school hours in the day alongside boarders and then return to their homes. These schools might also admit some students as day-boarders. These pupils would have meals at school along with attending classes, but they live off-campus. There are also quasi-boarders, who stay in boarding school but return to their families at mid-week and at weekends. Semi-boarders and day-boarders (collectively called as boarding-day scholars) have a distinct view of day school system, as compared to most other children who attend complete day schools without any boarding facilities. These students relate to a boarding school life, even though they do not totally reside in school; however, they do not completely become part of the boarding school experience. On the other hand, quasi-boarders have a different view of boarding schools as compared to most usual boarders (full term boarders), who would only go back to their homes either at the end of a term or by the end of an academic year.

Basic guidelines and essential regulations

The Department for Education and Skills of the United Kingdom has prescribed guidelines for boarding schools, called the National Boarding Standards.

One example of regulations covered within the National Boarding Standards are those for the minimum floor area or living space required for each student and other aspects of basic necessities.

A minimum floor area for each pupil with regarding to his/her dormitories, cubicles and bedrooms, is prescribed. This is attained by multiplying the number of students sleeping in the dormitory by 4.2 m², and then adding 1.6 m² to the resultant. A minimum distance of 0.9 m should also be maintained between any two beds in a dormitory, bedrooms and cubicles. In case students are provided with a cubicle, then each student must be provided with a window and a floor area of 5.0 m² at the least. A bedroom for a single student should be at least of floor area of 6.0 m². Boarding schools must provide a total floor area of 2.3 m² living accommodation for every boarder, at the minimum. This should also be incorporated with at least one bathtub or shower for every 10 students. These are some of the few guidelines set by the department amongst many others. It could probably be observed that not all boarding schools around the world meet these minimum basic standards, despite their apparent appeal.

Boarding schools across societies

It has been observed globally that a significantly larger number of boys are sent to boarding schools than girls and for a longer span of time. This may reflect the expense of boarding education and cultural bias that girls should remain at home either for their protection or for domestic duties.

Boarding schools in England started before mediæval times, when boys were sent to be educated at a monastery or noble household, where alone literate clerics could be found. In the twelfth century the Pope ordered all Benedictine monasteries such as Westminster to provide charity schools, and public schools started when such schools attracted paying pupils. These public schools (roughly for ages 13-18) reflected the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as in many ways they still do, and were staffed by clergymen. Private tuition at home remained the norm for aristocratic families, but after the sixteenth century it was increasingly accepted that adolescents of any rank could best be educated collectively. The institution has thus adapted itself to changing social circumstances over a thousand years.

Boarding preparatory schools (for 9 - 12 year olds) tend to reflect the public schools which they feed (they often have a more or less official tie to particular schools). Although still useful in modern times in many cases such as globetrotting parents, difficult family circumstances, or broken homes, they have been going out of fashion; although, apocryphally, the fictional Harry Potter's exciting Hogwarts school (a secondary school) has currently reversed the trend

The classic British boarding school became highly popular during the colonial expansion of the British Empire. British colonial administrators abroad could ensure that their children were brought up in British culture at public schools at home in the UK, and local rulers were offered the same education for their sons. More junior expatriates would send their children to local British-run schools, which would also admit selected local children who might travel from considerable distances. The boarding schools inculcating their own values became an effective system by which to deculturize the natives from their local culture and develop natives that would share British ideals and so follow and help the British achieve their imperial goals.

In 1998 there were 772 private-sector boarding schools in England, and 100,000 children attending boarding schools all over the United Kingdom. Most societies decline to take boarding schools as the preferred option for the upbringing of their children, except in British societies or in its former colonies; in England, India, and former African colonies of Great Britain, for example, boarding schools are one of the preferred modes of education.

Switzerland has one of the world's best education systems. The government developed a strategy to foster private boarding schools for foreign students as a business integral to the country's economy. Their boarding schools offer instruction in several major languages and have a large number of quality facilities organized through the Swiss Federation of Private Schools.

In the United States of America, boarding schools for students below the age of 13 are called junior boarding schools, and are not as common and not as encouraged as in the United Kingdom or India. In the late 1800s, the United States government undertook a policy of educating Native American youth in the ways of Western dominant culture so that Native Americans might be able to then assimilate into Western society. At these boarding schools, managed and regulated by the government, Native American students were exposed to a number of tactics to prepare them for life outside of their reservation homes. In accordance with the assimilation methods used at the boarding schools, the education that the Native American children received at these institutions centered on dominant society’s construction of gender norms and ideals. Thus boys and girls were separated in almost activity and their interactions were strictly regulated along the lines of Victorian ideals. In addition the instruction that the children received reflected the roles and duties that they were to assume once outside of the reservation. Thus girls were taught skills that could be used in the home such as “sewing, cooking, canning, ironing, child care, and cleaning” (Adams 150). Native American boys in the boarding schools were taught the importance of an agricultural lifestyle with an emphasis on raising livestock and agricultural skills like “plowing and planting, field irrigation, the care of stock, and the maintenance of fruit orchards” (Adams 149). These ideas of domesticity were in stark contrast to those existing in native communities and on reservations as many indigenous societies were based on a matrilineal system where the women’s lineage was honored and the women’s place in society respected. For example women in indigenous communities held powerful roles in their own communities undertaking tasks that Western society deemed only appropriate for men as indigenous women could be leaders, healers, and agricultural farmers. While the Native American children were exposed and likely adopted some of the ideals set forth by the whites operating these boarding schools, many resisted and rejected the gender norms that were being imposed upon them and continued in traditional systems of being, thwarting the process of assimilation. Women were at the center of this resistance.

Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928. University of Kansas Press, Lawrence: 1995.

Emerging perspectives

Children are sent away to school to develop wider horizons than their family can provide: a boarding school which a family has attended for generations may define the culture to which parents aspire for their children. However boarding schools involve some separation from one's parents and possibly culture, and so may give rise to a phenomenon known as the TCK or third culture kid, in which the pupils may fail to belong to either their parents' culture or their school's.

Modern philosophies of education like constructivism and new methods of music training for kids including Orff Schulwerk and the Suzuki method make the everyday interaction of the child and parent an integral part of training and education. The European Union-Canada project "Child Welfare Across Borders", an important international venture on child development, considers boarding schools as one form of permanent displacement of the child. This view reflects the new outlook towards education and child growth in the wake of more scientific understanding of the human brain and child development. Modern ideas of training and child development stand in stark contrast to the Victorian boarding schools of literature.

Concrete numbers have yet to be tabulated regarding the statistical data for the ratio of the boys that are sent to boarding schools to the ratio of girls, the total number of children in a given population in boarding schools by country, the average age across populations when children are sent to boarding schools, and the average length of education (in years) for boarding school students.

Selected bibliography

• Bamford T.W. (1967) Rise of the public schools: a study of boys public boarding schools in England and wales from 1837 to the present day. London : Nelson, 1967.
• Brewin, C.R., Furnham, A. & Howes, M. (1989). Demographic and psychological determinants of homesickness and confiding among students. British Journal of Psychology, 80, 467-477.
• Cookson, Peter W., Jr., and Caroline Hodges Persell. Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools. (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
• Fisher, S., Frazer, N. & Murray, K (1986). Homesickness and health in boarding school children. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 6, 35-47.
• Fisher, S. & Hood, B. (1987). The stress of the transition to university: a longitudinal study of psychological disturbance, absent-mindedness and vulnerability to homesickness. British Journal of Psychology, 78, 425-441
• Goffman, Erving (1961) Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1961); (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968)
• Hein, David (1986). The founding of the Boys' School of St. Paul's Parish, Baltimore. Maryland Historical Magazine, 81, 149-59.
• Hein, David (1991). The High Church origins of the American boarding school. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 42, 577-95.
• Hein, David, ed. (1988). A Student's View of the College of St. James on the Eve of the Civil War: The Letters of W. Wilkins Davis (1842-1866). Studies in American Religion. Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 1988.
• Thurber A. Christopher (1999) The phenomenology of homesickness in boys, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.
• Department of Education and Skills of the United Kingdom, Boarding School guidelines

Boarding schools in fiction

Boarding schools and their surrounding settings and situations have become almost a genre in (mostly) British literature with its own identifiable conventions. Notable examples of the school story include:

• Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby serialised novel (1838)
• Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays novel (1857)
• Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co novel (1899)
• Frank Richards's Billy Bunter long-running series (from 1908)
• Hugh Walpole's Jeremy at Crale novel (1927)
• James Hilton's Goodbye, Mr. Chips novel (1934)
• Enid Blyton's Malory Towers, St. Clare's and the Naughtiest Girl series of children's novels
• Elinor Brent-Dyer's Chalet School series of children's novels
• Antonia Forest's Marlow family stories, four of which are set at the fictional Kingscote School for Girls
• Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings series of children's stories (from 1950)
• Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie novel (1961)
• Geoffrey Willans' Nigel Molesworth series (illustrated by Ronald Searle)
• Ronald Searle's St Trinian's series of books (1948 onwards)
• Elizabeth George's Well-Schooled in Murder (1990)
• J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of novels (1990s onwards)
• Pacific Coast Academy in the Nickelodeon's television series Zoey 101

There is also a huge boarding-school genre literature, mostly uncollected, in British comics and serials from the 1900s to the 1980s.

• Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" (The Lowton School)

On the animated series Code: Lyoko, Kadic Junior High School is a boarding school where Team Lyoko lives and studies. In addition, most of the characters in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX (Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX) live in a boarding school called "Duel Academy" ("Duel Academia").

The setting has also featured in notable North American novels such as J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye; John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany; and John Knowles's A Separate Peace.

Boarding schools in films

• Mädchen in Uniform (1931)
• Goodbye Mr Chips (1939)
• Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951)
• St Trinians quartet (1954-66)
• The Trouble with Angels (1966)
• If... (1968)
• A Separate Peace (1972)
• Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
• Leidenschaftliche Blümchen (1978)
• The World According to Garp (1982)
• Secret Places (1984)
• Sacred Hearts (1985)
• Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)
• Dead Poets Society (1989)
• Flirting (1991)
• The Power of One (1992)
• School Ties (1992)
• Strike! (1998)
• Lost and Delirious (2001)
• Harry Potter series of films (2001-onwards)
• The Emperor's Club (2002)

See also

• Secondary education
• Special school
• Public school (UK)
• Military school
• School and university in literature

External links

• Former Boarding School Student Weblog
• National Boarding Standards for the United Kingdom, defined by the Department for Education and Skills
• Boarding School Directory