BOARDING OR DAY?
Boarding or day?
Deciding to 'send children away' to board is still a major step for every
family. If parents live near enough, choosing between boarding and day
school can be even harder.
Here are some more points to consider.
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Boarding works well for the majority of children. Once they reach 13, they are well on the road to independence and spending time away positively helps that process.
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Boarding helps develop inner resources and the ability to be self-reliant.
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Boarders can lean more heavily on the close friends they make at school and on the care of the staff.
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Unless parents are based abroad, they don’t say goodbye to their children for weeks at a time.
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Children who board see their parents relatively often, at weekends or on the touchline, at concerts or at plays. Parents are encouraged to drop in to see their children.
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Communication with home is also positively encouraged, and mobile phones and emails have completely changed the nature and frequency of contact between parents and children – providing they haven’t lost their phone, or had it confiscated, or lent it to a friend!
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When children are at home, it becomes real quality time, with each side appreciating the other more.
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Teenagers can be challenging, and boarding school staff have experience of most teenage issues, some many times over. They can listen, ask the difficult questions, deal calmly and constructively with crises, give good advice and support where needed, and handle the occasional rebellious outburst with a mixture of understanding and discipline. The years of adolescence can be less painful.
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A good relationship with an adult who is not a parent can also be a very positive experience for a young person
Advantages
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Boarding gives children the opportunity to develop in their own space away from the family, and to gain their independence in a structured environment.
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Boarding allows children to broaden their horizons and learn to live with and be tolerant of their fellow human beings, many of whom come from very different backgrounds and different parts of the country, and often the world.
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Boarding allows quality time to spend with peers and time to take advantage of a huge range of activities a boarding school can offer over and above the working day, such as involvement in a theatre, endless musical opportunities, CCF, extra sport, on-site art facilities, historical and debating societies, and much, much more.
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Boarding enables children to involve themselves wholeheartedly in the life of the school without the constant change of environment from home to school that is inevitable in a day school.
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Boarding provides an ideal opportunity to be independent and gain self-confidence for life in the 21st century. This confidence will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
Disadvantages
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Boarding is generally considered more expensive.
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Boarding takes children away from the family for long periods and can result in children becoming too detached from family influences.
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Boarding can allow the development of bad habits and be more subject to the influences of unsatisfactory peer groups.
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Boarding can discourage the development of family-based recreational pursuits, and social and cultural activities, particularly over weekends and holidays.
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Boarding takes children away from the structured and disciplined environment of the home.
BOARDING OR DAY? –THE PROS AND CONS
– Graham Able, Master of Dulwich College
As the Head of a large, mainly day school in London but nevertheless one with a significant boarding element, I have been asked to set out my own views on the advantages and disadvantages of boarding as against day education.
It has been my observation over many years that most children are equally well suited to either day or boarding education and the choice therefore mostly depends on parental circumstances and preferences. There are some children who are not well suited to boarding but these constitute a very small minority amongst those of secondary school age.
Similarly, there are some children for whom boarding
is essential for a variety of reasons: in the case of those with parents
serving in the Her Majesty’s Forces, the itinerant nature of postings
can, in itself, be disruptive to any form of day education. There are
also those who come from very isolated areas where realistic day options
maybe limited or even nonexistent (many years ago I came in to this category
myself).
Boarding has often been quoted as fostering independence.
I am unconvinced that the good development of independence is especially
promoted by boarding; rather I think it is something which can be fostered
in either a day or a boarding environment by encouragement and sensible
relaxation of boundaries with age. I do agree, however, that boarding
is particularly powerful in developing inter-dependence and a ‘team’ culture.
Most of today’s school population will go on to work in an environment
where there is a need for team players with an awareness of the strengths
and weaknesses of other members of the team. The necessary interpersonal
skills to succeed in such environments are particularly well fostered
in a boarding community.
In former times, boarders saw very little of their parents,
but this is no longer the case.
Unless parents are based overseas, they tend to play a much more active
part in school life than was the norm even twenty years ago and the advent
of mobile phones and emails has completely changed the nature and frequency
of contacts between parents and their boarding offspring. Many schools
offer flexible boarding programmes; these include weekly boarding which
is popular with many parents who have quality time to spend with their
children at weekends but where both may be working very long hours during
the week.
What then are the advantages of boarding?
Undoubtedly boarding allows children to gain an understanding of and a
tolerance of others in their boarding community, many of whom are likely
to come from very different backgrounds and different parts of the country
and the world. Most of our students in independent schools will go on
post University to work for international organisations, and an early
opportunity to understand different cultural, linguistic and religious
backgrounds can put them at a life-long advantage. Boarders inevitably
have more time to make full use of the wide range of co-curricular activities
offered by all good schools.
They also have the advantage of regulated prep times
which parents may find more difficult to supervise than boarding staff.
In many day schools, including my own, travel times to and from school
can be quite extensive and not especially productive. Boarding avoids
this particular problem. Finally, as mentioned above, the boarding community
is an excellent environment for learning the range of interpersonal skills
which will be needed for most careers. If boarding per see does not automatically
promote independence, this will be something that all good schools foster
and certainly boarders will be at no disadvantage in this respect.
The top disadvantage of boarding for most parents is the considerable added expense; this is an inevitable consequence of the high standards of pastoral care that all parents rightly expect of boarding schools. Where parents live abroad, boarding can take children away from the family for long periods and can result in children becoming too detached from family influences, although this has not generally been a major problem in my experience. Good modern communications make it much less of a hazard than would have been the case in the 1960s. Of course, if a boarding house is poorly run, boarding can allow the development of bad habits and allow young people to be more subject to the influences of unsatisfactory peer groups within their boarding community. Equally, in a well run boarding establishment, boarding can protect young people from choosing the wrong friends out of school and developing bad habits in this way. Boarding houses reflect the ethos of a particular school and this may differ from the aspirations of the family; such situations can be avoided if parents looking for boarding places take care to match their aspirations and standards with those of the school they choose.
Finally, boarding can interrupt the social side of family life in that
this will be dictated by term times and weekends spent at home (the latter
being more difficult the further the parents are from the school).
As with most choices in life, there are pros and cons for both boarding
and day education.
Each family needs to look at its own circumstances and how these will
affect a child’s education before coming to the best decision for that
particular child in that particular family unit. All good schools will
provide excellent support to both their boarders and their day students.
Inevitably the school will tend to have a slightly greater influence on
the development of boarders, especially in the middle teenage years, than
it can hope to do with its day pupils where parental influence will tend
to be proportionately greater.
Graham Able’s career extends over a range of HMC day and boarding schools. Initially at Sutton Valence, then as Second Master of Barnard Castle School before becoming Headmaster of Hampton in 1988 and then Master of Dulwich College in 1997. In 2003 he was chairman of HMC. He enjoys golf, cricket and contract bridge; he is also a life-long supporter of Norwich City Football Club.
