Boarding schools don’t always get a good press and, at times, rightly so based on the model of boarding that existed for much of the twentieth century in Britain. Too many children were sent away to board regardless of their wishes, at too young an age, with complete separation from home, and occasionally, into unsympathetic regimes that failed to put the welfare of the children themselves as their top priority.
Yet despite this backdrop, boarding in the UK is still alive and kicking, indeed thriving, based on a new enlightened model that really does put the happiness of our children at its heart. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Harry Potter books emerged at the turn of the century as children, the world over, warmed to the idea of time spent with friends of their own age in an exciting world far away from the humdrum of daily life at home. At the same time, twenty-first century boarding was emerging with a new modern family-friendly face, geared to provide the best possible opportunities for the children of busy two-parent working families, while also protecting children from many of the pressures that modern society ever-increasingly brings to bear on the young.
Without wishing to be trite, for children in 2023, boarding simply means fun and friendship. Fun with your friends, and in friendships that inevitably become deeper than those developed in normal day school life. What child does not enjoy a sleepover at a good friend’s house? What child, from the top end of primary school onwards, does not get excited about a school residential trip away with his friends? What parent denies their eager children these opportunities? Yet boarding in twenty-first century Britain is simply an extension of those experiences. It is one long school trip with your mates, but one now undertaken only with the consent of the children themselves, at an appropriate age, without the separation of old from home, and into the hands of kind and committed staff.
Modern family life is not for the faint-hearted. Two parent working families rush to get children off to school in the morning hopefully pushing some breakfast into them if they’re lucky, before committing to a busy day of work themselves. Then, in the flash of an eye, someone needs to pick up the children from school, risk a confrontation with their children over getting down to some homework, either become an unpaid taxi driver to cart their children off to clubs, or feel guilty that they are not carting them off to clubs when all their neighbours are, make daily decisions over how much screen-time they’re going to allow their children (it’s confrontation time once again), before finally reaching the end of the day exhausted, gasping for that glass of wine, and then starting the whole cycle again the following morning.
But what do children want? More than anything else, I believe they crave freedom. Freedom to be with their friends, freedom to have some control over their spare time, freedom to take risks, and freedom to explore the world safely. Yet modern life and society denies them many of those freedoms and ironically, while protecting them from physical harm in our risk-averse culture (whose children roam free anymore?), the reality of twenty-first century life is that it plunges children into an online world that is full of potential threats, and a world that most parents are hopelessly ill-equipped to help them to navigate through... and then there was Covid, which if it taught us one thing above all else, it was that all children, from toddlers to hulking adolescents, need the company of other children in order both to develop naturally, and to be happy.
Modern boarding gives children their freedom back. Indeed, I believe it can actually give them their childhood back which is especially relevant in an era when a joyful and carefree childhood is seriously under threat across every strata of society. How many times have I said to a parent ‘your child only gets one shot at childhood?’ or ‘you can never get childhood back once it’s gone?’ With friends on tap, safe and invariably beautiful grounds to roam around or make dens in, the sporting facilities of a country club to take advantage of, unparalleled opportunities on the extra-curricular front all under one roof without a harassed taxi-driving parent in sight, and all in a culture where computer games simply don’t exist and, crucially, are not missed by children due to all the competing ‘traditional childhood’ distractions on offer to them. ‘Children often say that boarding is like one long sleepover, but a sleepover with all of your mates... and they’re not wrong.’
But where are you left as a parent? Certainly not feeling separated, as these days modern boarding means from one day a week upwards, involving daily communication with home, with visiting positively encouraged and crucially, with time at home becoming much-valued family time compared to the rush of daily mid-week family life.
My experience is actually that modern boarding leaves parents happier than ever in their parenting. Principally, they are happy because their children are happy. Nothing beats that phone call home saying “I’m having a blast” or on a long summer’s evening, “Sorry, I can’t speak for long as everyone’s playing British Bulldogs”. But parents also know their children are getting a real childhood (old-fashioned if you like) in a safe and protected environment, with the freedom that children crave, with time to develop passions and interests that short school days do not allow, all in a wonderfully screen-free world, the combined result of which is that childhood is prolonged for their children for as long as is humanly possible in a twenty-first century world that all agree makes children grow up far too quickly. In 2023, modern boarding truly does have more relevance than ever before… and it’s fun!
Tom Bunbury, Headmaster, Papplewick School, Ascot