For many children their school life is made up of long holidays at home with term time actually spent exclusively at school, or they spend the week staying at the school and come home for the weekends. This is the life of the school boarder and it is an old English traditional way of educating usually in a private setting but there are some state ones available. The term board literally relates to the child receiving room and board which the school provides for the student along with moral and social support of the school houses that the children are placed in and from the staff. This tradition is still very strong in UK Boarding schools. These schools were once a hot bed of masculine activity and during the traditional grand tour of Europe that these gentleman would undertake you can be sure they partook int some after hours activities. For this reason STIs were spreading and unlike nowadays where you can get Home STI Kits Greenwich way, many of these viruses went undetected. Of course this is not what boarding schools are like today. For now, let’s take basic look at these British institutions.
The most famous Boarding schools in the UK are Eton and Harrow. Competition between these two is fierce and the schools have produced Prime Ministers with Eton recently education the future King of England William and his younger sibling Prince Harry. In the Boarding school the House system is the key. Each pupil is allocated a house and it will be their house until they leave. It acts as a family away from home but also gives the pupil a sense of belonging and purpose. A senior and experienced teacher at the school is appointed the house master or mistress and this also seems to generate a bit of competition between the staff too! One of the most famous fictional examples of this is Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series or the four different houses at Enid Blytons Malory Towers. Though it’s unlikely your child’s house will be chosen by a magical hat, certain rules such as siblings and relations coming into the school afterwards will generally be put in the same house as those older ones before them.
The children’s houses have common rooms for study, social functions and leisure and the sleeping arrangements are usually through the dormitories. All offer some private individual rooms, and this is certainly the case in the later years such year 10 or Sixth form. There can be some strict codes of “lights out” which is done to ensure that everyone gets a good night’s sleep though some dispensation is given to foreign students considering the time difference making late nights the only time parents and family can be contacted.
One thing to remember is that most boarders are “free” schools. This means they are privately paid for by the parents of the attending pupil and are general outside the government sphere of influence in how the school allocates funds and budgets or if it uses the national curriculum. One thing that is certain is that the Department for Children, Schools and families work closely with the Department of Health and the school to ensure that the highest standards of welfare are met.
