Melvyn Roffe, Principal of Wymondham College

To some people’s way of thinking it is amazing that the British boarding school still exists. After all, it flourished in the era of Empire, of a rigid class system and harsh discipline. In an era when children were rarely seen and never heard, what better way of bringing up one’s children than to send them to boarding school?  

But, in the twenty-first century, with the Empire long dispersed, the class system eroded, with parents desperate to understand their children, not to beat them, surely the fact that 60,000 children are still educated in British boarding schools is an anachronism?

Well, it would be if boarding schools were still as they were. But they are not. Like every other aspect of society, boarding schools have changed – and very much for the better.
For one thing, children are no longer ‘sent’ to boarding school. These days the decision to choose boarding – and to choose a particular boarding school – is as likely to be that of the child him or herself as that of his or her parents. And it is right that it should be. Boarding school is a way of life. It is an incredibly enriching way of spending your formative years – but it is not for everyone and not all boarding schools are right for all students. Most boarding schools spend a lot of time, and no small amount of money, in explaining to prospective pupils what it is that they offer.

The need to appeal to pupils themselves can also be seen in the way that boarding houses look and the way that they operate. Long gone are enormous impersonal dormitories with stark decor and minimal heating. Now most boarding houses boast small, well-furnished study bedrooms shared by a few pupils. Light, airy accommodation is the order of the day in a modern boarding house, with a plasma TV in the common room and internet connectivity at least in the IT room, if not throughout the house via WiFi.

The school is likely to boast some fairly impressive facilities in other areas, too, so that whatever a pupil’s strong suit may prove to be, the facilities are there to develop that skill or interest to the greatest possible extent. Boarding schools have some of the finest facilities for sport, music and drama in the country.

But, in the end, it is not the bricks and mortar that make a good boarding school; it is by their strong relationships that most schools would wish to be judged. Again, here much has changed in the last century. Parents are welcomed in and kept in touch with their children’s progress and welfare. Dedicated and well-trained staff support pupils, creating an environment in which young people can learn to live together in a real community. This overused word is nevertheless by far the best to describe a boarding school where young people live together, work together and play together. In contrast to the isolation and alienation that characterises so much of modern life, boarding schools are places where children share their interests and enthusiasms, celebrate their successes and endure their failures, growing up to respect each other and their diverse talents and idiosyncrasies.

With all this going on, it is small wonder that boarding schools feature so strongly in the lists of the most successful schools in the country. Academic progress is never taken for granted at boarding schools, but rather is seen as the key strand in a web of success, each strand of which supports the others. They are skilled at finding the special thing that excites the enthusiasm of the individual pupil and then they harness that enthusiasm to create across-the-board achievement.

Underpinning this success are the core values of any good boarding school. Boarding schools engender respect and loyalty in their pupils, they encourage them to care for others, to get involved, be active and have their own opinion, to be innovative and thoughtful, and to strive to be the very best they can be. Unsurprisingly, these are also the values that universities and employers’ organisations cite, along with good qualifications, as being the key to success in higher education and employment. Boarding school pupils leave school already understanding the importance of these values because they have already had the opportunity of seeing what they mean in practice.

The Boarding Schools’ Association (www.boarding.org.uk) represents over 500 state and independent boarding schools (and the new boarding academies) in the United Kingdom, and some British-style boarding schools overseas. Many of these schools are used to educating children from Service families, and they often have special arrangements or bursaries for Service children. State boarding schools and boarding academies (www.sbsa.org.uk) must give priority in their admissions arrangements to Service children for whom the Continuing Education Allowance is payable.

These days, boarding schools have shed the harsh image of a previous age. It may seem unlikely, but they are proving one of the success stories of twenty-first century education.

Melvyn Roffe has been Principal of Wymondham College, a large state boarding school in Norfolk, which is now an Academy, since September 2007, after six years as Headmaster of Old Swinford Hospital, another state boarding school. Initially, he taught at Oundle School before becoming Head of English and then Director of Studies at Monmouth School. He has been an inspector with the Independent Schools Inspectorate. He was Chairman of the State Boarding Schools Association (formerly STABIS) in 2004 and 2005, and Chairman of the Boarding Schools’ Association in 2008–2009.  

 

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