boarding schools magazine issue 34

The Magazine of the Boarding Schools’ Association BOARDING SCHOOL • 1

BOARDINGSCHOOLThe magazine of the Boarding Schools’ Association

Number 34 • Winter 2011

Liberating aspiration • History in the house 2 • Boarding across the Pond • Victorian resilience

Academy’s boarding vision

Organised by:

StudyWorld London 3-5 September 2012

Bringing together over 850 study-abroad

professionals from 60 countries worldwide,

StudyWorld is the UK’s longest-running event of

its kind. Its reputation for quality is unmatched.

192 agencies from 46 countries attending StudyWorld this year

expressed an interest in meeting representatives from boarding

schools. Registration for next year opens in November 2011 -

register early to benefit from the best rates.

www.studyworldfair.com

SW Boarding school advert.indd 1 28/09/2011 12:34


The deadline for the next edition of Boarding School (issue No.34) is 28 August 2011. Copy for this edition should be sent to:

The Editor Dick DavisonBoarding Schools’ AssociationGrosvenor Gardens House35-37 Grosvenor GardensLondon SW1W 0BS

Telephone 020 7798 1580Fax 020 7798 1581Email [email protected]

Boarding Schools’ Association LtdRegistered in England and Wales.Registered No: 4676107Registered Office: Grosvenor Gardens House35-37 Grosvenor GardensLondon SW1W 0BS

Publisher’s NoticeBoarding School is published bi-annually by the Boarding Schools’ Association.

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Contents Director’s column: Wish fulfilment 3

Academy’s boarding vision 5

Phoenix on the Mersey 10

Liberating aspiration 12

The human touch 16

History in the House 2 19

Images of boarding 24

Boarding in the Prep? Yes please 26

Victorian resilience 28

Boarding’s southern extremity 32

Boarding across the Pond 34

Using technology to support achievement 36

The Essential Guide to Boarding… by boarders 38

Ask not what your assistant can do for you…. 40

Unlocking leadership potential 42

Royal wedding date for Gordonstoun choir 46

Students rear pork for top London restaurant 47

Number 34 • Winter 2011

Phoenix on the Mersey Page 22

Images of boarding Page 24

BOARDINGSCHOOLThe magazine of the Boarding Schools’ Association

Unlocking leadership potential Page 42

Organised by:

StudyWorld London 3-5 September 2012

Bringing together over 850 study-abroad

professionals from 60 countries worldwide,

StudyWorld is the UK’s longest-running event of

its kind. Its reputation for quality is unmatched.

192 agencies from 46 countries attending StudyWorld this year

expressed an interest in meeting representatives from boarding

schools. Registration for next year opens in November 2011 -

register early to benefit from the best rates.

www.studyworldfair.com

SW Boarding school advert.indd 1 28/09/2011 12:34

2 • BOARDING SCHOOL The Magazine of the Boarding Schools’ Association

The UK’s leading supplier of school minibuses for over 30 years

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year almost 1400 boarding staff attended BSA day seminars, and 235 are currently involved in the certificate courses.

Politics is another dimension of the BSA’s work.

Much of last year was preoccupied with assisting the Department for Education in its revisions of the National Minimum Standards for Boarding Schools. By the time you read this issue the new Standards will be bedding in, having been introduced on 1 September 2011. It is salutary to be involved in the ‘bonfire of the regulations’, however much one might wish to see some things consigned to the flames. The revision process involved the reduction of 52 Standards to 20. The

resulting document is certainly much more manageable, and in effect gives a lot more scope for schools to find

their way to the right solution for them in terms of many of the requirements for looking after

boarders well.

This places a quite legitimate burden of responsibility upon schools themselves to stand accountable for the decisions they make in their particular circumstances. Building on the excellent practice of recent years,

working with the 2002 version of the Standards, schools have been released from considerable

prescription but will surely sail through future inspections of boarding welfare with flying colours.

A second revolution in the boarding world occurred in September when responsibility for those boarding welfare inspections passed from Ofsted to the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI). Ofsted retains its role as inspector of boarding in the state boarding schools. Both inspectorates will be working with the new Standards. For schools in membership of the ISC Associations, eventually their inspections of education and boarding will dovetail, with a three yearly boarding welfare inspection added.

All this change and a background of grumbling concerns from UKBA about international students. BSA has worked in this political arena for the last two years, speaking up for independent schools whose overseas pupils should be the very last people to raise alarms with the Immigration Services. British boarding schools bring in the brightest and the best of such students, with huge benefits for the diversity of schools and the British economy in general. With Highly Trusted Status for Tier 4 immigrants won for our schools, long may it continue.

Hilary Moriarty National Director

Wish fulfilment

Above all, boarding is about the people.

The pupils, the parents, the staff, the head, the governors. Keeping all of the people happy all of the time is not necessarily easy, but there is at least some consolation that many of the people themselves are involved in just that: staff trying to keep pupils happy, governors trying to keep staff happy, pupils trying to keep – perhaps - parents and staff happy. And the head? Well, the head is probably the only one who at any one time is trying to keep all of the people at least half way to happy, and sometimes flaking out in the attempt.

But mostly, people in boarding are great: Governors are aware of a responsibility with a whole extra dimension from their friends and colleagues who have only a day population to look after. Staff in boarding are stars whose headteachers all too often are aware of how far they go beyond the extra mile: matrons and school nurses who come to the BSA conference designed for them but held, we are sorry to say, in the summer holidays; housemasters and housemistresses who detach themselves from friends and family to attend their BSA conference on January 2 (and yes, we know it’s a bank holiday, and we are just delighted they come).

About boarders, we could write all day – their achievements, their anxieties, their sense of fun and sense of community, the lunacies up to which they can get and the sheer love you can feel for them on the day they leave. They are what the business of boarding is all about. And parents – who can doubt that the relationship that can build up between parents of boarders and the staff who become surrogate parents to their precious offspring during term time is a very special bond? Houseparents really do know those children, in much the same way as a parent knows them. Here is the stuff of the very best partnerships, from which everyone benefits.

The pages of Boarding School reflect the wide and various world of boarding, its pages populated by some of the people who make our schools as good as they are and whom the BSA serves with its publications, day seminars, conferences and training for certificates accredited by Roehampton University. In the last

the director’s column

The UK’s leading supplier of school minibuses for over 30 years

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“About boarders, we could write all day - their

achievements, their anxieties, their

sense of fun and sense of

community”

DESIGN PRINT+

CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL PROSPECTUS

The pastoral system is central to the School’sorganisation and success. Staff are fully committedto ensuring the welfare of the boys at the School.

The aim of the pastoral system is to support boys asthey progress through the School, helping them todevelop socially, morally and academically.

It promotes emotional well-being, respect for others,socially responsible behaviour and mutual tolerance,maintaining the standards of a civilised community.

The Form Tutor facilitates a close relationshipbetween the boys, teachers and parents, ensuring thatcommunication and co-operation is at the heart of allcontact. The School Counsellor, Peer Mentors, theLearning Support Department and the PersonalSocial and Health Education curriculum are alsointegral to the highly efficient pastoral system.

The pastoral system is led by the Second Master anda team of Year Heads.

PASTORAL CARE

“The School promotesdiversity and there reallyis something foreveryone.”THIRD FORM BOY

115The Berkhamstedian 2010

Played: 13 Won: 10 Lost: 3

The Under 12A team enjoyed a very fineseason. Discounting for the moment thematch against Locker's Park Under 13Ateam, in which Berkhamsted were withouttheir captain Nick Rosenhagen-Christensenand also James Campion ~ two vitalcomponents of the team ~ the boys playedtwelve matches against Under 12 opposition,winning ten of them and losing only two. Inthe process, Berkhamsted scored 50 goalsand conceded 17 ~ a ratio of almost exactly3 - 1. Statistics like these are the result ofcompetence in all areas of play, and indeedof excellence in some.Although the team lostto the school's great rivals Dr Challoner's andBrentwood, our boys were unlucky not todraw against the former and very unluckynot to win against the latter, finally losing 2 -3 after a tremendous fight back.

James Wilton in goal made some fine savesduring the season,and the centre back pairingof Matthew Bottrill and Stuart Frame wasbrave under the high ball and tried todistribute constructively when in possession.Full backs Matthew Ashmore and MatthewAllen were fast,gritty and very useful supportsto the midfield. For the future, however, Iwould like to see all four defenders tackle withmore determination and power: a crunchingtackle can accomplish much in raising teamspirit ~ and undermining the opposition's!

In midfield the team had great strength. On

the left, Connor Worrell'snatural left foot sent overexcellent crosses ~ and alsocorner kicks from both sides ~throughout the season, whilstJames Campion's skill and paceon the right had the beating ofalmost all the defenders he came up against.Besides their fine creative play, Connorscored 3 goals and James scored 5. In thecentre of midfield Tom ffitch, always acombative tackler and ball-winner,developedinto a continually improving user of the ball.Additionally, he scored 5 goals, including ahat-trick against Forest School. Tom wasawarded the `Most Improved Player' trophy.

In attack, the team had the services of thehard-working Toby Lyons and JackLamport. Although on occasion I felt thatthey were too concerned to take that finalextra touch before shooting (the touchwhich almost invariably comes beforelosing possession!), nonetheless Tobyscored 11 goals and Jack top-scored with13, including a hat-trick of headers againstKimbolton School! Unheard of!

I must also mention our substitutes, ScottDuguid, Edward Tidey and David Hughes.Scott featured in twelve matches, in whichhe was in the starting line up in five, has astrong shot, and was overall a very reliabletwelfth man. EdwardTidey not only playedtwo matches in goal, but was a fine centraldefender in the victory over Chigwell

School. David Hughes also played twice ingoal for the team.

I have left until last the captain and midfieldgeneral, Nick Rosenhagen-Christensen.Thisis a boy of exceptional quality, who was thebest player on the field in all matches inwhich he played, and whose dribbling skillsdelighted all those who watched him. Hisbalance and speed of foot are trulyremarkable, and it is in no way surprising thathe played in the Under 13A team in theircup matches.He was the deserved recipientof the `Player of the Season' trophy.

I would like to end this report by saying whata splendid bunch of lads these were to workwith.Watching them play made me feel veryproud,and because of them,and also becauseof the fantastic support which I received fromtheir parents on the touchline and in thepavilion, I, too, had a very enjoyable season.

Squad: Matthew Allen, Matthew Ashmore,Matthew Bottrill, James Campion, ScottDuguid,Thomas ffitch, Stuart Frame, DavidHughes, Jack Lamport, Toby Lyons,Nicholas Rosenhagen-Christensen, EdTidey, James Wilton, Connor Worrell

PJGWarde

Under 12A Football

A season with many encouragingindividual performances.Thomas Daffernwas top scorer for the season (by onegoal over Sam Emmerson). David Hughesmust be congratulated for his goalkeepingthat kept us in a couple of games. AlexGutwin was a rock in defence and therewere some gritty displays from midfielderssuch as Ben Van Vlymen, Robert Barrowand Richard Emanuel, to name but a few.

The closest but most satisfying wins wereagainst Forest,Hemel and Highgate.The latterinvolved a winning goal in the final minutes ofthe match to seal a 1-0 victory.Wins againstForest and Hemel are always satisfying asthey are commonly very closely fought

affairs.The only frustrating disappointmentswere marginal defeats against Chigwell andHaileybury in which we took the lead atcertain points of the game.The former wasplayed with only ten men and the latter hadan under strength U12B team.

It must be noted that many of thesuccesses came as a result of good,unselfish play from the boys that instilledconfidence and improved the team. Finallythe support of the parents was muchappreciated and often their presenceacted as a ‘Twelfth man’ in home matches.

Player of the Season –Thomas Daffern

Most Improved Player – EdwardTidey

Squad: Robert Barrow, Thomas Beadle,Thomas Daffern, Scott Duguid, RichardEmanuel, Samuel Emmerson, GeorgeFearn,Alex Gutwin, Gareth Honour, DavidHughes, Christopher Lovett, CraigMagrath, Benjamin Peck, Matthew Radu,Jonathon Silcock, Daniel Sitwell, EdwardTidey, RupertTrusselle, Ben vanVlymen

V Fung

Under 12B Football

creators of innovative design print and websites for schools

throughout the south east

prospectusmagazinesnewslettersstationeryexhibition standswebsites

“There is a positive attitude around theSchool, it is always buzzing withenergy.”SECOND FORM BOY

114 The Berkhamstedian 2010

The U13As enjoyed a very successful and,asI am sure the parents would agree, a veryentertaining season. Some of the passing andmovement was a credit to these youngplayers. During the campaign the teammanaged to whack in 51 goals withWebbergetting 22 of them. At the other end of thepitch, Barr was outstanding in goal andon numerous occasions drew praisefrom opposing coaches and neutralspectators. This has to be one of the finestU13 teams at dead ball situations. TheU13As dominated in the air at corners, notjust by size,but the bravery of the players thatwould get on the end of O’Gorman’sBeckhamesque crosses. Gilhooley proved tobe an inspired captain who led by exampleand could also be relied upon to terroriseopponents with his accurate free kicks.

Highlights of the season include: the teamreaching the third round of the ISFA Cup,narrowly losing in a hum dinger of a matchagainst City of London - the referee’s report

giving glowing praise of theconduct and sportsmanship ofboth teams; a cup victory away atthe much fancied Brentwood;and a late winner against DrChalloner’s. These achievementsmade possible by a positiveattitude and lots of hard work.

Player of the Season:Cameron Barr

Most Improved Player:Charlie Pollock

Squad: ChrisAllen,Cameron Barr,Christian Craig, Charlie Gilhooley,Oliver Green, Alex Green, AdamHarris, James Insch, Oliver Martin,Alex Munday, Casey O’Gorman,Charlie Pollock, Matt Pugh, JoelRabinowitz, Ed Rogers, NicholasRosenhagen-Christensen, BrodieSteele, MaxWebb

D Simpson

Under 13A Football

This was a fine season with a number ofclosely contested games. Highlightsincluded the superb first halfperformance against Highgate where wehit four fantastic goals and a 2-2 drawagainst Brentwood, when Berkhamstedheld out against all the odds.

The boys developed over the course ofthe year into a very competitive side.They were (as the cliché goes) greater than the sum of their parts.Thebasis of the side was a strong defence - led by Ben Brazier, and JamesInsch and marshalled by ‘safe hands’ Nick Woof - that was capable ofsoaking up sustained pressure. Chris Allen was exceptional all season, lyingdeep in the centre of midfield, turning defence into attack.

A record of three goals a game however, suggests that we were not shygoing forward. Swift breaks were the key and we had a number of playerswith some skill and pace and the ability to unlock even the tightestdefence. Adam Harris (6), Nick Gomez (5) and skipper Christian Craig(11) in particular had keen eyes for goal.

Player of theYear: Christian Craig

Most Improved Player: Nick Gomez

Squad: Chris Allen, Sam Bard, Ben Brazier, Christian Craig (c), Nick Gomez,Adam Harris, James Insch, Ed Lidington, James Liveing, Oliver Martin,Rahmeen McGee, Cameron Perry, Robert Platt, Nick Woof

DL Foster

Under 13B Football Brentwood

Xxxs

Winter 2010/2011Issue 38

The Magazine for the Old Boys and Girls of Uppingham School, RutlandA38703 Uppingham O

BAG Magazine GILL P7:Layout 1 9/11/

10 17:04 Page 1

www.bainesdesign.co.ukBarley House | Cuffley Gate | Sopers Road | Cuffley | Hertfordshire | EN6 4RY

t 01707 876555 | e [email protected]

Baines HMC Advert 2011:Baines Letterhead A4 SJB 1/9/11 11:13 Page 1

DESIGN PRINT+

CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL PROSPECTUS

The pastoral system is central to the School’sorganisation and success. Staff are fully committedto ensuring the welfare of the boys at the School.

The aim of the pastoral system is to support boys asthey progress through the School, helping them todevelop socially, morally and academically.

It promotes emotional well-being, respect for others,socially responsible behaviour and mutual tolerance,maintaining the standards of a civilised community.

The Form Tutor facilitates a close relationshipbetween the boys, teachers and parents, ensuring thatcommunication and co-operation is at the heart of allcontact. The School Counsellor, Peer Mentors, theLearning Support Department and the PersonalSocial and Health Education curriculum are alsointegral to the highly efficient pastoral system.

The pastoral system is led by the Second Master anda team of Year Heads.

PASTORAL CARE

“The School promotesdiversity and there reallyis something foreveryone.”THIRD FORM BOY

115The Berkhamstedian 2010

Played: 13 Won: 10 Lost: 3

The Under 12A team enjoyed a very fineseason. Discounting for the moment thematch against Locker's Park Under 13Ateam, in which Berkhamsted were withouttheir captain Nick Rosenhagen-Christensenand also James Campion ~ two vitalcomponents of the team ~ the boys playedtwelve matches against Under 12 opposition,winning ten of them and losing only two. Inthe process, Berkhamsted scored 50 goalsand conceded 17 ~ a ratio of almost exactly3 - 1. Statistics like these are the result ofcompetence in all areas of play, and indeedof excellence in some.Although the team lostto the school's great rivals Dr Challoner's andBrentwood, our boys were unlucky not todraw against the former and very unluckynot to win against the latter, finally losing 2 -3 after a tremendous fight back.

James Wilton in goal made some fine savesduring the season,and the centre back pairingof Matthew Bottrill and Stuart Frame wasbrave under the high ball and tried todistribute constructively when in possession.Full backs Matthew Ashmore and MatthewAllen were fast,gritty and very useful supportsto the midfield. For the future, however, Iwould like to see all four defenders tackle withmore determination and power: a crunchingtackle can accomplish much in raising teamspirit ~ and undermining the opposition's!

In midfield the team had great strength. On

the left, Connor Worrell'snatural left foot sent overexcellent crosses ~ and alsocorner kicks from both sides ~throughout the season, whilstJames Campion's skill and paceon the right had the beating ofalmost all the defenders he came up against.Besides their fine creative play, Connorscored 3 goals and James scored 5. In thecentre of midfield Tom ffitch, always acombative tackler and ball-winner,developedinto a continually improving user of the ball.Additionally, he scored 5 goals, including ahat-trick against Forest School. Tom wasawarded the `Most Improved Player' trophy.

In attack, the team had the services of thehard-working Toby Lyons and JackLamport. Although on occasion I felt thatthey were too concerned to take that finalextra touch before shooting (the touchwhich almost invariably comes beforelosing possession!), nonetheless Tobyscored 11 goals and Jack top-scored with13, including a hat-trick of headers againstKimbolton School! Unheard of!

I must also mention our substitutes, ScottDuguid, Edward Tidey and David Hughes.Scott featured in twelve matches, in whichhe was in the starting line up in five, has astrong shot, and was overall a very reliabletwelfth man. EdwardTidey not only playedtwo matches in goal, but was a fine centraldefender in the victory over Chigwell

School. David Hughes also played twice ingoal for the team.

I have left until last the captain and midfieldgeneral, Nick Rosenhagen-Christensen.Thisis a boy of exceptional quality, who was thebest player on the field in all matches inwhich he played, and whose dribbling skillsdelighted all those who watched him. Hisbalance and speed of foot are trulyremarkable, and it is in no way surprising thathe played in the Under 13A team in theircup matches.He was the deserved recipientof the `Player of the Season' trophy.

I would like to end this report by saying whata splendid bunch of lads these were to workwith.Watching them play made me feel veryproud,and because of them,and also becauseof the fantastic support which I received fromtheir parents on the touchline and in thepavilion, I, too, had a very enjoyable season.

Squad: Matthew Allen, Matthew Ashmore,Matthew Bottrill, James Campion, ScottDuguid,Thomas ffitch, Stuart Frame, DavidHughes, Jack Lamport, Toby Lyons,Nicholas Rosenhagen-Christensen, EdTidey, James Wilton, Connor Worrell

PJGWarde

Under 12A Football

A season with many encouragingindividual performances.Thomas Daffernwas top scorer for the season (by onegoal over Sam Emmerson). David Hughesmust be congratulated for his goalkeepingthat kept us in a couple of games. AlexGutwin was a rock in defence and therewere some gritty displays from midfielderssuch as Ben Van Vlymen, Robert Barrowand Richard Emanuel, to name but a few.

The closest but most satisfying wins wereagainst Forest,Hemel and Highgate.The latterinvolved a winning goal in the final minutes ofthe match to seal a 1-0 victory.Wins againstForest and Hemel are always satisfying asthey are commonly very closely fought

affairs.The only frustrating disappointmentswere marginal defeats against Chigwell andHaileybury in which we took the lead atcertain points of the game.The former wasplayed with only ten men and the latter hadan under strength U12B team.

It must be noted that many of thesuccesses came as a result of good,unselfish play from the boys that instilledconfidence and improved the team. Finallythe support of the parents was muchappreciated and often their presenceacted as a ‘Twelfth man’ in home matches.

Player of the Season –Thomas Daffern

Most Improved Player – EdwardTidey

Squad: Robert Barrow, Thomas Beadle,Thomas Daffern, Scott Duguid, RichardEmanuel, Samuel Emmerson, GeorgeFearn,Alex Gutwin, Gareth Honour, DavidHughes, Christopher Lovett, CraigMagrath, Benjamin Peck, Matthew Radu,Jonathon Silcock, Daniel Sitwell, EdwardTidey, RupertTrusselle, Ben vanVlymen

V Fung

Under 12B Football

creators of innovative design print and websites for schools

throughout the south east

prospectusmagazinesnewslettersstationeryexhibition standswebsites

“There is a positive attitude around theSchool, it is always buzzing withenergy.”SECOND FORM BOY

114 The Berkhamstedian 2010

The U13As enjoyed a very successful and,asI am sure the parents would agree, a veryentertaining season. Some of the passing andmovement was a credit to these youngplayers. During the campaign the teammanaged to whack in 51 goals withWebbergetting 22 of them. At the other end of thepitch, Barr was outstanding in goal andon numerous occasions drew praisefrom opposing coaches and neutralspectators. This has to be one of the finestU13 teams at dead ball situations. TheU13As dominated in the air at corners, notjust by size,but the bravery of the players thatwould get on the end of O’Gorman’sBeckhamesque crosses. Gilhooley proved tobe an inspired captain who led by exampleand could also be relied upon to terroriseopponents with his accurate free kicks.

Highlights of the season include: the teamreaching the third round of the ISFA Cup,narrowly losing in a hum dinger of a matchagainst City of London - the referee’s report

giving glowing praise of theconduct and sportsmanship ofboth teams; a cup victory away atthe much fancied Brentwood;and a late winner against DrChalloner’s. These achievementsmade possible by a positiveattitude and lots of hard work.

Player of the Season:Cameron Barr

Most Improved Player:Charlie Pollock

Squad: ChrisAllen,Cameron Barr,Christian Craig, Charlie Gilhooley,Oliver Green, Alex Green, AdamHarris, James Insch, Oliver Martin,Alex Munday, Casey O’Gorman,Charlie Pollock, Matt Pugh, JoelRabinowitz, Ed Rogers, NicholasRosenhagen-Christensen, BrodieSteele, MaxWebb

D Simpson

Under 13A Football

This was a fine season with a number ofclosely contested games. Highlightsincluded the superb first halfperformance against Highgate where wehit four fantastic goals and a 2-2 drawagainst Brentwood, when Berkhamstedheld out against all the odds.

The boys developed over the course ofthe year into a very competitive side.They were (as the cliché goes) greater than the sum of their parts.Thebasis of the side was a strong defence - led by Ben Brazier, and JamesInsch and marshalled by ‘safe hands’ Nick Woof - that was capable ofsoaking up sustained pressure. Chris Allen was exceptional all season, lyingdeep in the centre of midfield, turning defence into attack.

A record of three goals a game however, suggests that we were not shygoing forward. Swift breaks were the key and we had a number of playerswith some skill and pace and the ability to unlock even the tightestdefence. Adam Harris (6), Nick Gomez (5) and skipper Christian Craig(11) in particular had keen eyes for goal.

Player of theYear: Christian Craig

Most Improved Player: Nick Gomez

Squad: Chris Allen, Sam Bard, Ben Brazier, Christian Craig (c), Nick Gomez,Adam Harris, James Insch, Ed Lidington, James Liveing, Oliver Martin,Rahmeen McGee, Cameron Perry, Robert Platt, Nick Woof

DL Foster

Under 13B Football Brentwood

Xxxs

Winter 2010/2011Issue 38

The Magazine for the Old Boys and Girls of Uppingham School, RutlandA38703 Uppingham O

BAG Magazine GILL P7:Layout 1 9/11/

10 17:04 Page 1

www.bainesdesign.co.ukBarley House | Cuffley Gate | Sopers Road | Cuffley | Hertfordshire | EN6 4RY

t 01707 876555 | e [email protected]

Baines HMC Advert 2011:Baines Letterhead A4 SJB 1/9/11 11:13 Page 1


Academy’s boarding vision

These are promising times for state boarding, with two Academies – Harefield and Wellington – opening new boarding houses this term and a third, Priory in Lincoln, set to provide boarding places from September 2012. BOARDING SCHOOL visited Harefield to hear about the vision which has informed the school’s determination to offer boarding opportunities.

If it hadn’t been for a couple of basketball players, the opening of The Harefield Academy’s brand new boarding house would have gone perfectly. With two days to go before the beginning of term, the builders were still putting the finishing touches but everything – including the flat-screen TVs – had been delivered and all was on course for a smooth launch for one of England’s two new boarding schools. Then it was discovered that two of the first boarding pupils – both basketballers – were too tall for the beds. Fortunately two rooms, designed for medical purposes, had more flexible sleeping arrangements and all was well.

The Harefield Academy, situated just a few miles north of Heathrow airport, where London’s outer suburbs meet rural Buckinghamshire, opened six years ago, at first in the buildings of the comprehensive school it replaced. Within three years, it had moved into a brand new building on the same site but, from the outset, its leadership team, backed by the Academy’s sponsors, believed that for some of their students, boarding would be the vital component in their success.


For some, it was about making the best use of the Academy’s sports specialism. Very quickly, Harefield started to attract talented footballers, gymnasts and basketball players from across London and the Home Counties, some from up to two hours away. A relationship with outside sporting bodies – Watford football club, where some of the young footballers are on the books, and the local gymnastics club – rapidly established the Academy’s sporting reputation.

As word of the sporting facilities started to spread, enquiries came from parents outside the UK too.

A third, and perhaps the most urgent, need identified by Harefield was that of the ‘sofa-surfing’ student – children whose family backgrounds had become so disrupted that their educational, as well as social, development was deeply imperilled.

Principal Lynn Gadd says: ‘We probably have no more of these children than most state schools but there are a fair number nonetheless. Their circumstances are all different but they might go like this: A boy might live with mum and it goes fine until mum has a new partner. Then the boy might feel threatened, or the new partner might feel threatened by the boy, so boy moves to dad and probably hasn’t lived with dad for a long time. Dad gives it a bit of a shot and then, because he doesn’t like the rules, the student goes back to mum. Then the relationship with either or both the parents might break down and they end up with granny or even with a friend or a friend of a friend.

‘We have a number of these students who are at the brink of social services intervention. Boarding gives us, and them, the opportunity to avoid that.’

Gadd believes that a school like Harefield is ideally suited to meet the needs of such young people and feels that state boarding offers them a more conducive environment than many independent boarding schools could. While acknowledging the

important contribution it made for some students, she is critical of the Pathfinder

scheme, established by the last government to encourage the placement of vulnerable young

people in independent boarding schools: ‘It worked for some students but the dropout rate was massive.

If you drop a state school child, often with quite complex needs, into a private school and not to be able to fund all the infrastructure –pocket money, what you do at weekends when your friends are from much more wealthy families – then you can see the problem. What we are providing may be more in tune with some student’s needs.’

Harefield’s new boarding house – to be named Lord Adonis House after the Labour minister, himself a product of local authority-funded boarding, who was an early supporter of the vision – has accommodation for 50 students. The intention is to keep a balance between the three types of boarding student – those who need respite from difficult domestic circumstances, the sports specialists, and the handful of overseas students.

The house opened this September, immediately very close to capacity and the first 40 boarders are indeed a representative cross-section. Says Gadd: ‘We’ve been very surprised, almost overwhelmed in fact, by the interest and demand. We think we’ve been true to our mission, which we knew would be difficult in the first year because we had got to drop students in, rather than what will be our norm of seven each year.

‘We haven’t got firm criteria of how many will fit each category – the social needs group, the sporting group, and one or two from overseas – but we don’t want it to be dominated by one

Academy’s boarding vision continued

“Until now we have had very little to

show people some of the early families who came to look around had little more than plans and a building site look at and

we talked to them about the vision.”


group. Our day school is reflective of all-comers and is hugely mixed ability, so you could have a child who is swimming for Great Britain but isn’t academically very strong or you might have a footballer who might be called up to play for an under-21 team and is going to sail through GCSE and A level.’

She adds: ‘Until now we have had very little to show people – some of the early families who came to look around had little more than plans and a building site look at and we talked to them about the vision.’ About two-thirds of the Academy’s new boarders are new to Harefield this term, coming in at all stages from Years 7 to 12; the remainder are existing students who have converted to boarding.

The house itself is arranged on three floors around a bright atrium, opening on to a small garden separated by a wall from the main school building. Accommodation is in single, double and triple rooms on the first and second floors, while the ground floor is given over to “family” rooms, with recreational and cooking facilities. The boarders are organised in four all-age family groups, each with a full-time member of staff.

Responsibility for the boarding house falls to director of boarding John Brown and house parent Lara Price, who has just joined Harefield from Woldingham, an independent girls’ boarding school. Both have three-bedroom apartments within the boarding house, while two assistant house parents also have smaller apartments on the top floor.

These four full-time staff are supplemented by the school nurse who will be there in the mornings and some sessional staff in the evenings.

The focus is on full, not weekly, boarding. The Academy is conscious that its case for local authorities to support pupils rests partly on its providing highly cost-effective full-time care in term-times. John Brown says: ‘Some of the 40 who are starting boarding are local students who will go home at weekends but we expect that about 30 will stay at weekends. And some of those who start by going home at weekends, once they realise what’s going on here may well want to stay.’

Lynn Gadd has nothing but praise for all those who have helped Harefield realise its vision. ‘The State Boarding Schools Association allowed us a sort of friendship status as we were planning and have been incredibly welcoming and willing to help. Hilary Moriarty, the BSA national director, also gave us huge amounts of advice. We did lots of visiting and others came to see us. We were very grateful for all that because none of us have any real experience of boarding at all and their help with structures, policies and procedures has been invaluable.’

Independent schools, too, have been liberal with their advice and support. Amongst the schools they visited were both Eton (where discovering the importance of the all-age house system was especially influential) and Harrow, while a visit to Christ’s Hospital brought the realisation of a closely-shared vision: ‘They just sent us every policy and every piece of paper and said make use of it if you can. We were bowled over by them.’

Local authorities have been supportive too, though sometimes ‘challenged through their own bureaucratic infrastructure’ – money was available if a student already fell into a category, but to stop them getting into the category in the first place by funding a boarding place sometimes proved more

difficult. ‘But I’ve got nothing but praise for the people on the ground that we’ve been working with,’ says Gadd.

First impressions from Harefield’s first boarders:

‘I moved into the Boarding House last week. I like it but it is very strange getting used to having meals with other people rather than just eating when you like. The food is much more healthy than at home although I have not always eaten it all. I have a bedroom with another boy who is the same age. We have been to the local shops together but are not yet allowed to Uxbridge. I am looking forward to the trips that have been arranged for this term.’

‘I now have a bed to myself rather than sleeping on my friend’s sofa. I counted up that in the week before the start of term I slept in three different beds in three different houses and in the week after the start of term I have a bed and a room to myself. The life here is good but sometimes we need to go to bed early. I know this is a good thing but I am just not used to it.’

‘The staff are very helpful and have made me welcome. At first I did not know any other boys but now I know them all. I have been very busy in school and also with the sports clubs after school. I have joined the local football team and I train on Thursday evenings and play matches on Sunday mornings. I have made friends with boys in the village who do not come to this school. I want to join the local scouts but I am not sure if there will be time. I am very tired as I have to fit my homework in as well.’

Lara Price, House Parent at The Harefield Academy:

I began my career as a public librarian, and moved into schools, establishing a new library for Bristol Cathedral School in 1999. I subsequently worked for Prior Park College as librarian and boarding house tutor under Kate McCarey, an amazing housemistress who inspired me to follow in her footsteps through her passion and models of best practice.

I went on to broaden my experience as a housemistress at St Mary’s Hall in Brighton and Woldingham School, working with sixth form girls and then Year 10s.


Academy’s boarding vision continued

… and The Priory plans its sixth form boardingIt is an exciting time, too, for The Priory Academy, Lincoln, as it looks to open its brand new sixth form boarding house (below) in September 2012. Up to 60 sixth form boarders will be accommodated in single en-suite study bedrooms, with access to a range of social facilities and a large dining area all set in the grounds of the school.

Peter O’Donoghue, Boarding Master at The Priory Academy, comments: ‘The decision to offer boarding at The Priory was an easy one. A number of students in Lincolnshire and surrounding counties travel considerable distances, on a daily basis, to benefit from our high-quality teaching and wide range of courses. Furthermore, with RAF Waddington, one of the largest bases in the country, just seven miles away, the school now has the ability to offer continuity of provision for the children of Service families who are posted away during the sixth form years.’

As a science specialist school, boarding is also expected to attract students with an interest in careers in medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and many other areas of science. The Academy’s new sports centre, the stables and the swimming pool will probably attract students who are keen to pursue a range of extra-curricular sporting activities.

The aim of the boarding house is to prepare sixth form students for university life. But an unusual feature of the boarding provision is that students will spend part of their induction period at The Priory’s own residential centre near Bayeux in Normandy, meeting with the head and assistant head of boarding, as well as other Priory staff, in an informal and supportive environment. In addition, all boarding students are given the opportunity to spend the Easter holidays on trips abroad to destinations in America, Africa and Asia.

When I saw the houseparent role for The Harefield Academy advertised, it was clearly an exciting opportunity to be part of a big project, something which I always love. Upon visiting the Academy for interview, I was immediately impressed and enthused by its inclusive educational ethos and its strong leadership team. The boarding house was clearly going to be an exciting new chapter in this already vibrant school’s life and as such the appeal was too great to resist.

Watching a house full of builders transform into a house full of children has been a fascinating experience. The house has

been specifically designed to enable us to have a co-educational intake and this is working well. When one considers that the boarding experience is a new one for our students, they have settled into this lifestyle extremely well. The natural way in which they are helping each other, in particular the older students mentoring and guiding the younger ones, is a joy to behold! In all, this beginning phase of the Boarding House has proved to be positive, popular and successful.

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Fire ActionThe school Fire Alarm Warming is givenby a continuous sounding tone.Follow instructions given by your teacher.

On discovering a fireA teacher will raise the Alarm by operatingthe nearest Fire Alarm Call Point.

On hearing a warning of fireEvacuate the premises quickly and calmly.Close all doors behind you.Proceed along the marked exit routes.Report to the Fire Assembly Point.Report missing children to the Head Teacher.

Do not take any unnecessary risks.Do not run, walk in silence.Do not use the lifts, use the stairs.Do not re-enter the building until theHead Teacher has stated that it is safe to do so.

Central ResourcesFire exit doors

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07957 761131 www.emmadaviesphotography.co.uk

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A43514 Emma Davies Advert:Layout 1 7/10/11 13:08 Page 1


Phoenix on the MerseyLike many schools, Liverpool College responded to the long decline in boarding by closing its boarding house about 20 years ago. Then a chance meeting between the new Principal and the wife of Liverpool University’s Vice-Chancellor led to the establishment of a new international boarding house at the College and much closer collaboration between the two institutions.

Sometimes neighbours meet coincidentally. That was certainly the case in 2008 when Lady Sheila Newby, wife of the new Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, Sir Howard Newby, attended a Common Purpose course aimed at bringing together established and newly arrived community leaders. One of the participants at the course was Hans van Mourik Broekman, the newly appointed Principal of Liverpool College, an HMC coeducational independent day school.

Sheila and Hans noted their mutual interests in strengthening links for young people between schools and universities. Initially, this led to a formal educational partnership between Liverpool College and the University of Liverpool. The partnership includes specific courses for Sixth Formers and access to university facilities and lecturers. Last year, College Sixth Formers were able to study philosophy and logic at the University.

The University and the College had been close neighbours since the 1930s when Liverpool College moved to its current 30-acre campus in the Mossley Hill area of the city and the University built Derby Old Court, a college style hall of residence on the Greenbank estate immediately adjacent.

Over the years, the University and the College have both developed their respective sites extensively, without much further contact or collaboration between the two institutions. Broekman saw an opportunity for even closer collaboration.

“It occurred to me that the University and the College had a common interest: to raise the educational profile of the city of Liverpool internationally and to make sure that our students were truly prepared to be citizens of world. I felt the College should join the University is some small way in their pursuit of this more international strategy.”

Liverpool College was for most of the 20th century a boys boarding and day school. In the early 1990s the decision was made to convert the boarding house into a Pre-Prep. The loss of boarding had been acutely felt. The College prides itself on the diversity of its pupils and its international links, and both were diminished when boarding disappeared. Refurbishing Derby Hall and using parts of it for Sixth Form boarding opened up the possibility of a more international, more diverse, and more academically vibrant Sixth Form while strengthening the partnership with the University of Liverpool, particularly in admissions.


Working together, the refurbishment was completed in the summer of 2010. In 2009-2010 Broekman had travelled the world recruiting students for the new programme. The unique features that Liverpool College offers: excellent pastoral care, an admissions link with the University, spacious single room accommodation, and living in a city were attractive to pupils. The newness of the project deterred many but several pioneers did embrace the challenge. After a national search, Mrs Liz Kendall was appointed Head of Boarding and a team of current staff members began their training to become house tutors. The College maintenance department then coordinated and implemented a major refurbishment of a large section of Derby Hall. Pupils have use of two large common rooms and take their meals in the newly refurbished dining room at the College. Derby Old Court is located 100 meters from the main gates of the College

OFSTED approved the boarding proposals in the spring of 2010 and has given a very positive verdict on the boarding programme after a subsequent inspection. In its first year, the

Hall housed 11 pupils from 9 different countries, including the UK. This year, it has grown to 18 pupils. Ultimately, the target is to have 30 boarders from many countries at Liverpool College.

Some of the boarders have made an immediate impact in school life. Archer Wang from Taiwan plays football, is an NCO in the CCF, has been commended for an economics essay by Cambridge University and is confidently preparing his university applications. The boarders are enrolled to study A Levels or one year GCSEs in an A Level Foundation year. Many boarders have a connection with the University of Liverpool with aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, studying or teaching at the University.

Plans for the future include expanding links with the University and incorporating the day pupils in the activities of the boarders as well as developing traditions unique to a newly formed boarding school.


Liberating aspirationMany boarding schools were founded with charitable intent and have, throughout their history, provided transformational opportunities for their pupils. Many provide bursaries but Rugby School has a radically different approach. Headmaster PATRICK DERHAM describes the success of the Rugby initiative and why it has attracted interest from politicians, the media and parliamentary committees.

Social mobility is not an abstract concept for me. My father was a soldier and after he left the Army my family moved to a council estate in the borders of Scotland where my mother still lives. Last summer, I was in South Street Seaport in New York, and I spoke onboard the Peking, a four masted barque built in Hamburg a century ago which, when owned by the Shaftesbury Homes, and moored on the River Medway, was my home and school for two years in the 1970s. Then it was known as the Training Ship Arethusa and, as I stood on board, I reflected on the lessons I had learnt there: the importance of standing up for what is right; the benefits that stem from community life and the character development that flows naturally from activities outside of the classroom.

Above all, I reflected on how different my life would have been if the ship had not closed in October 1973. I was being prepared for CSE Exams and entry to the Navy at 16. Instead,

my life was turned upside down when, through charitable support, I found myself at a school that offered me a whole new world of opportunities, similar to those enjoyed by the pupils in all our schools. Pangbourne offered me a whole new world of opportunities and, instead of leaving school at 16, I went on to read history at Cambridge. Without this opportunity I would not be sitting at the desk of my celebrated predecessor, Dr Arnold, himself a passionate believer in the redemptive power of education.

My experience means that I not only recognise the truth of the great Chartist slogan that ‘education is a liberating force’


but I am also passionately committed to widening access. I believe that schools have a duty to give as many young people as possible similar life-changing opportunities. I passionately believe in giving every boy and girl I can the opportunity to dream dreams and to become, in Michael Gove’s words, ‘the authors of their own life stories’.

Widening access is very much part of Rugby’s DNA and since the school was founded in 1567, Rugby has provided support for day pupils through the Lawrence Sheriff bequest. When I came to Rugby in 2001 I wanted to provide the same opportunities for boarding pupils and so in 2003 the Arnold Foundation was established to offer fully funded places, subject to means testing, for young people who would particularly benefit from a boarding school education but who are unable to afford the fees. Where necessary Arnold Foundation support includes the cost of extras, for example uniform, laptop, essential books, music lessons, trips and travel to and from the school. All our fund-raising is directed at providing transformational opportunities for young people and not for capital projects.

It’s important first to recognise the importance of our fundraising; without that we could not have achieved anything. When I went to Rugby in 2001 the first challenge was to begin the process of re-engaging with the Old Rugbeians and to professionalise our fundraising. We set in train a plan to change our alumni society. With the assistance of a reforming president and his successors, we now have a vibrant, dynamic organisation that has transformed the relationship between the school and its former pupils. I can’t emphasise enough how important this change was.

At the same time we appointed a professional, full-time development director. We needed someone who was highly sensitive to the wide range of emotions they would encounter from all parts of the Rugby community and particularly

someone who would be sensitive in dealings with former pupils, many of them aggrieved by past treatment by the school. We struck lucky with the appointment we made and I am clear that the relationship between the head and the development director is a crucial one if a school is to be successful in its fundraising objectives.

We have come a long way in eight years. To date more than £9.6 million has been raised and there are currently 29 pupils in the school supported by the Arnold Foundation. Since the scheme started 59 pupils have benefitted from the Foundation’s support with 18 already pursuing a university education.

So, what can we learn from The Arnold Foundation?The most important lesson is that to be really effective, bursary programmes must stem from a genuine desire to transform lives. The Arnold Foundation was not a knee-jerk response to the 2006 Charities Act but is part of a genuine commitment to widening access at Rugby, a tradition started by the founder in 1567 and continuing to the present day.

Last year we commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), to carry out an independent evaluation of the work of the Arnold Foundation. The report can be accessed on the Arnold Foundation website (www.thearnoldfoundation.net). It found that Rugby’s long tradition of charitable activity is a key factor in the scheme’s success. The Arnold Foundation is ‘embedded in an egalitarian and inclusive school culture.’ Not only do Arnold Foundation pupils benefit from this culture but the Foundation in turn reinforces Rugby’s historic values and ethos. Rugby’s other pupils benefit from the social diversity and insight into less privileged backgrounds, and the staff find working with Arnold Foundation pupils particularly rewarding.

The Arnold Foundation needs to be seen in the context of changing attitudes to scholarships and bursaries. Scholarships should be directed to those who need them and not given to the bright or talented children of the wealthy. I was determined that we should lead in this and Rugby was the first boarding school to reduce all scholarships to 10% in 2003 while making all scholarships fully augmentable to 100% support, subject to means-testing. Rugby’s belief that independent schools can and should be powerful engines of social mobility is demonstrated

I passionately believe in giving every boy and girl I can give the opportunity to dream dreams and to become, in Michael Gove’s words, ‘the authors of their own life stories’.


by a clearly stated aim of having 10% of pupils funded either through the Lawrence Sheriff bequest or the Arnold Foundation within the next 10 years. The 10% target is appropriate, manageable and sustainable for a school of our size and ambition. We are well on the way and we are currently at 9% of the school being supported in this way.

The second key lesson is the importance of finding the right pupils to support. There is a widespread belief in the independent sector that it is difficult to find pupils to take up bursary places. This could not be further from the truth. There is a demand but the challenge is identifying the right pupils. And it has to be worked at. We are not interested in simply cherry-picking the brightest children from maintained schools. Instead we want to help those who stand to gain the most from a boarding education and who can later become role models and leaders within their own communities. So we do not advertise for pupils – this simply does not work - but we work principally with partner organisations; this is crucial to our success. We seek out educational charities in inner-city areas who are dealing first-hand with social exclusion and underachievement and who share our commitment to raise aspirations.

Our two most established alliances are with IntoUniversity and the Eastside Young Leaders’ Academy. IntoUniversity aims to address underachievement and social exclusion among young people through an integrated programme of out-of-school study, mentoring, aspirational coaching, and personal support and, in partnership with universities, specially devised FOCUS weeks, days and weekends. It provides a national network of high quality, local learning centres where young people are inspired to achieve. It currently operates from six centres, the first one in North Kensington (where Rugby School has strong links going back to the nineteenth century), with others in Lambeth, Brent, Bow and Haringey and there are plans to open a further six centres across London over the next few years.

At the heart of the programme offered at each of these centres is the belief that underachievement is best addressed in the context of a long-term pastoral engagement with young people. These are values that we are proud to be associated with and they are similar to those of the second charity we have developed a partnership with, the Eastside Young Leaders’ Academy. Founded in 2002 in the East End of London, it works to nurture the leadership potential and improve the life chances of young African and Caribbean males with the aim of ‘empowering them to become the next generation of successful leaders’. It does this by providing educational and emotional support for boys between the ages of 8 and 18, particularly those identified as being at risk of social exclusion.

Working with these charities enables us to reach out to young people for whom boarding is a remote concept. They help in identifying suitable candidates and are fully involved in the whole application process. The majority of Arnold Foundation pupils are from a single parent family, and may have to

contribute to running the household, or live in cramped and noisy accommodation where it is difficult to study.

Boarding at Rugby liberates them from these constraints and provides them with the

support and encouragement they need to achieve their full potential.

Something we didn’t expect back in 2003 when we started was that schools in the maintained sector would also want to work with us. Here I disagree with Antony Seldon, who argues that giving bursaries to bright children benefits individual

pupils but does nothing to help state schools. This is not our experience.

When a girl from a school in Tower Hamlets joined us last year her success was celebrated

in the school newsletter; my own recent visit was similarly featured with details of all that we are doing

at Rugby and the growing links between the two schools. The whole school community has embraced her achievement and it is helping to raise aspirations throughout the school.

Liberating aspiration continued

“At the heart of the programme is the belief that underachievement is best addressed in the context of a long-term pastoral engagement with young people.”


This is an edited version of a speech Patrick Derham made to the BSA heads’ conference in May.

The third key lesson is that pastoral support, critical to a bursary scheme’s success, must be for families as well as for the young people. The pupils not only receive school-based support but also on-going support from partner charities and schools. At Rugby they have the same pastoral support as all pupils but, in addition, benefit from having older peers as mentors and access to four dedicated Arnold Foundation tutors, who have an empathy with them and an awareness of their home environment. For the most part, the pupils are so well integrated that many pupils and staff don’t know which pupils are supported by the Foundation. We also want parents to share in the journey; a parent coordinator sees Arnold Foundation parents regularly, so they are encouraged to embrace all that Rugby has to offer. Most importantly, this level of support is maintained during the school holidays.

Transforming lives is at the heart of the Arnold Foundation and our aspiration has become a reality. Arnold Foundation pupils have achieved academic success and of the pupils who have left Rugby one is a professional rugby player and all the others are either at university or on a GAP year. NFER research has found the benefits of for Arnold Foundation pupils include increased academic achievement and extracurricular participation, improved social skills and self-esteem, development of leadership skills, enhanced social skills, aspiration to go on to higher education and increased confidence.

For some, this has been an opportunity to break free from negative cycles such as gang culture, financial pressure, and a culture of low educational attainment and low aspirations. The raising of aspirations is key to us. One former pupil put it very well to one of the NFER researchers: ‘I am now at university and they have opened doors for me. I wasn’t even sure I would end up at uni before. But going to Rugby was like, yes I want to do something with my life and achieve. I feel like I have taken so much from this whole Rugby experience.’

The Arnold Foundation is unique because it is so carefully targeted. By offering places to young people who stand to gain the most and who have the potential to become role models in their own communities, Rugby is helping to raise aspirations at a much broader level; the NFER research found that the partner

organisations and schools we work with use the achievements of their Arnold

Foundation pupils to raise the aspirations of the other young people they work with.

There is growing interest in what we are doing from the universities too and we have spoken to a

number of Russell Group universities over the course of the last 18 months and they are keen to learn from our experiences and particularly the way in which we have built such effective partnerships. After a recent visit to King’s College London the Vice-Principal described the Arnold Foundation as the ‘gold standard’ and ‘something we should reflect on seriously in the HE context’.

The Arnold Foundation is without doubt the most satisfying part of my job as Head Master of Rugby. I am constantly surprised and humbled by what has happened over the course of the last eight years. We know that what we are transforming lives and unleashing aspiration. The NFER Report concluded with this powerful endorsement: ‘A resounding and significant finding of the research is that the Arnold Foundation has been providing, and is continuing to provide, life-changing opportunities for young people.’

I passionately believe that the Arnold Foundation is a bursary scheme that achieves so much more than simply helping out with the school fees. Furthermore I think all our schools should be doing all they can to open their doors as widely as possible to help improve social mobility and to help address the very real problem of a poverty of ambition that is so widespread throughout the country.

“The Arnold Foundation is without

doubt the most satisfying part of my job as Head Master of Rugby. I am

constantly surprised and humbled by what

has happened over the course of the last

eight years.“


The human touch

RD: How did you get into boarding education in the first place?RH: As a young man, I had always thought about teaching but did not go into it right away. I was in publishing for two years after graduating when I had one of those epiphany moments, in which I visualised myself walking through a set of buildings and spaces which were clearly a school and I realised I did want to teach. It was late in the year and the job that came up and I got was at Marlborough College.

I didn’t board myself at school, although I had the opportunity to do so and should have done, in the sixth form. My school, King’s School, Worcester, was a very good school but the boarding was really starting to fade out and it wasn’t as well promoted or presented as it is now in our schools. I should have boarded because I was at school so much anyway, doing all kinds of activities, but I didn’t and regretted it later.

So my first experience of working in boarding education was at Marlborough. As a resident tutor, I learned from the ground up, at a time when Marlborough was going through some

challenging times. Looking back on it, as a very young and inexperienced ‘beak’, it was to some extent sink-or-swim, and fortunately I swam and learnt some very valuable lessons. It’s not the kind of induction I’d recommend for everybody, though.

I did five years there and they very kindly let me do a PGCE in the middle of it. I went on from there to Eastbourne College as head of English but then became a housemaster, which was my first experience of running a boarding house: my wife and I ran a sixth form girls’ boarding house. Then the school went co-educational and I was appointed to the senior management team to help manage that transition and then became the registrar and SMT person with overview of marketing. My first headship was at Aldenham, where I was for six years to 2006 and then to Uppingham.

RD: So the epiphany moment was about teaching itself, rather than teaching in a boarding school?RH: Yes, but remember that this was at the time of industrial action in schools in the mid 1980s. Doing my PGCE in 1985-86 at Exeter, I did my teaching practice at a couple of state schools

New BSA Chairman RICHARD HARMAN, Headmaster of Uppingham, talks to Boarding School editor Dick Davison, about how he discovered the joys of working in boarding and about the importance of keeping the human dimension in a world that demands measurement


which was great from many points of view. But the atmosphere in the staffroom was terrible and it almost put me off going back into teaching, certainly into the state sector at that time. One of the biggest reasons for that was that people who wanted to go the extra mile, rather than doing just the minimum working to rule, were actively discouraged by others and by the general atmosphere. And it was because of all the extras, the added value, the drama, for example, which I was very keen on, the music and sport that you could get in a boarding environment and the going the extra mile pastorally – that was what I wanted to embrace, the full nine yards, and at that particular time it certainly wasn’t like that in the maintained day sector, sadly.

RD: And it’s deliberate that you have always been in boarding schools since then?RH: Yes, because although boarding’s not for everybody, I could see what value it added for those who choose it: that tremendous sense of rootedness and belonging when it works really well – and the flexibility and the resilience it teaches you, quite apart from the time for all those activities. And I love being at the heart of a strong community. I feel very strongly about this. It’s something we have lacked in our culture as a whole – that sense of community.

RD: What would you say are the big challenges facing boarding now? RH: Obviously, it’s a challenging time economically. You can’t ignore that. It will remain a challenge to all of us to keep recruiting strongly. Having said that, the figures from the last ISC Census were really encouraging for boarding. But it means that we as a sector have to be very good at promoting boarding. Socially and culturally, we have moved a long way from the 80s and 90s when it was sometimes difficult for people to justify sending their children to boarding schools. But there is still, in some sections of society, an anti-boarding lobby and, whilst respecting people’s opinions, I think we need to make sure we put the other side of the argument.

RD: You mentioned the ISC figures and, while it’s true that boarding numbers have been encouragingly stable for some years now, there are some worrying trends within that, not least the fact that the stability has been largely underpinned by increased numbers of overseas and expatriate boarders, suggesting that the domestic market is still declining.RH: I’m not sure that it’s that worrying; increasing numbers of families are located overseas but want a continuity of education and we can provide that. And I celebrate the overseas market which brings in so much to our economy as a whole. That said, it is of course true that families here are under pressure financially. I just think that the numbers show that the market

is remarkably resilient and has held up much better than some people forecast it would. There are still plenty of people who would want to choose boarding education if they could afford it and we are all having to look to our bursaries and scholarships to try to help with that.

RD: There’s a limit to what any individual school can do though, isn’t there?RH: Yes, there is a limit and families have to make difficult choices but for me the headline is about the resilience of the sector, rather than the decline of the home market. You can’t escape from economic headwinds but it’s about remaining strong for when things recover domestically as well as celebrating the diversity of the whole boarding community.

RD: You have been involved in marketing, at Eastbourne: what do you think is the secret of marketing boarding?RH: There are no magic solutions in marketing. It’s about doing the bread and butter things very well, communicating at every opportunity, understanding what your key selling points are for the market you’re in. I do believe if you’ve got a really good product that partly sells itself but you have got to ensure that your communication channels are right and you have a really clear message about what the benefits are.

“So my first experience of working in boarding education was at Marlborough. As a resident tutor, I learned from the ground up, at a time when Marlborough was going through some challenging times. “


RD: Your predecessor at Uppingham, Stephen Winkley, was one of the prime movers in the Boarding Education Alliance in the 1990s and that may have been one of the factors in arresting the long decline in boarding.RH: It was very effective. I think that a large part of that was about acknowledging that there weren’t just economic things happening, there was a social change too. I remember seeing Stephen on a TV show with Esther Rantzen making just that point and I think that was a really important time for boarding.

We must keep doing that and keep our eyes on the fact that there are social changes. Obviously one of the things that’s happened is that boarding itself has become more diverse – some schools, like mine, have remained very firmly in the full boarding niche while others have become much more flexible – and we should celebrate the diversity of options it gives parents.

RD: The resurgence of state boarding is one of the most encouraging recent trends, which suggests that there is a real demand for boarding of all kinds.RH: One of the great strengths of BSA is that it crosses the sectors and I very much welcome the growth of maintained sector boarding – it shows that parents and children will opt for it if you’ve got the right people, the right facilities and the right ethos. It is tremendously encouraging.

RD: And with the BSA, what would you like to see happen during your year of office?RH: There are a couple of key things and they link to what I’ve already said. One is the need to make sure we get our positive stories out there in the media and in the ongoing debate about what boarding can offer and how it links with today’s needs. If we can achieve that greater visibility and positive promotion over the course of the year, in the face of some challenging times, that will be an important way forward. I think the best way to do it is through actual stories: people’s experiences, tangible evidence of the difference boarding can make, how we work with families. Those stories from parents, from alumni, from pupils, are the most powerful evidence we have got, more powerful than any set of statistics. We have a modern obsession with regarding only what is measurable as important, so the challenge is to make sure that we provide tangible ways of understanding what we value and what can add value. Of course it’s about academic excellence but it’s about so much more than that – let’s provide the evidence.

Linked with that is the whole agenda about emotional intelligence. Some people call it happiness though I think it’s deeper than that – a sense of well-being and belonging that will see you through unhappy times as well as happy – and it’s something that society is desperately in need of. Schools of all kinds, but especially boarding schools, can contribute to that debate. Politicians are fond of talking about tough love: they are very good at talking about the tough bit but it’s much harder to be concrete about the love. It’s our job to bring that aspect of our work to life.

RD: On inspection, BSA and others have worked for a long time to get this under the ISI umbrella. You must be pleased that that has happened but do you expect to see any fundamental change?RH: The proof of the pudding is in the eating, of course, but I am very pleased that the inspection of boarding in independent

schools is now going to be done by ISI rather than Ofsted. There’s a greater chance of tapping into the expertise of the boarding sector and having some consistency. I was on the working party which produced the slimmed down NMS and I’m very pleased about the reduction in prescription there.

But what we’ve got to make sure is that, in practice, we are being inspected against a minimum set of standards, that the excellence in our sector is reflected and that it’s user-friendly. We are going to have to monitor that this year but I’m pleased that the hard work of the last year or so has set us up for what I hope will be a more consistently high quality inspection process. Inspection has brought benefits as well as challenges over the last 20 years and, as long as it’s done by the right people in the right way, it’s to be welcomed. We have got the new dispensation and it’s our job this year to make sure that it beds down properly and gives a good high quality service and one that also builds on our strengths.

RD: What about relations with the Government because, paradoxically, boarding probably had its strongest supporter in the last government, Andrew Adonis?RH: I know Andrew Adonis quite well – he came to speak at my Speech Day a couple of years ago – and he was, of course, a product of boarding himself and understood boarding schools. He hasn’t disappeared from the scene, his voice is still heard and I think Michael Gove is on the same wavelength, so I’m reasonably optimistic about that. I think increased co-operation between independent and state schools is a good thing and I hope that the work of schools which are in partnership with maintained schools and Academies will be recognised positively. Boarding is an area where we have got a lot of expertise to contribute.

While it’s understandable in the atmosphere of government cuts, I think it’s a shame that we don’t any longer have the grant from the DfE for training – it was always going to be vulnerable – but while we have got to accept that it won’t be available this year, we’ve got a strong case to make for it. We are the experts in boarding and we are one of the few, if not the only, cross-sector association. That’s a great position of strength and we shouldn’t assume that we won’t ever get that grant back. There is certainly a case for our expertise to be used as the Academy boarding side continues to grow.

RD: When you look back on your year of office, what would you like to have happened on your watch?RH: That the BSA has been increasingly recognised in the areas of debate that matter – with government, in independent-state school partnership, in the media debate about what boarding education can contribute to society. That BSA is a kitemark of quality and also an effective voice for the sector. That we have celebrated the strong and helped those who might be struggling in challenging times. That we’ve kept on the front foot in promoting the benefits of boarding.

And finally, I hope that we can continue to help people to develop professionally and to enjoy the richness and fun of working in boarding. We need that. I think the secret for boarding in the future is to combine the best of the human touch, the unfussy traditional approach that isn’t cold and distant and ‘tick-boxy’, with the professionalism that we all need. We need to be well-trained and professional, yet if we lose the human face at the centre of it all, we’ve lost everything. I hope that BSA can contribute to getting that balancing act right.

The human touch continued


History in the House 2

Although Canford School, near Wimborne in Dorset, was founded only in 1923, it occupies buildings with a history stretching back to before the Norman Conquest.

The first written record of Canford Manor is an entry in the Domesday Book and, in 1221, William Longespée, Earl of Salisbury, was given permission to fell royal timber for a house at Canford. Others who have held the Manor of Canford include Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII and King Henry VIII himself. The only mediaeval part still standing, known as John O’Gaunt’s (right below), dates from around 1400. It was built as an extension to the existing building to house the kitchens. Now used by the school debating society, as a general meeting room and for formal dinners, it remains an impressive building, still featuring the thick walls and enormously wide chimneys of the ”large old kitchen, called by the country people John of Gaunt’s Kitchen”, which local historian Hutchins referred to in his 1774 History of Dorset.

The school’s main building is, essentially, the house built in 1825 for the then owner William Ponsonby, with further remodelling by Sir Charles Barry (architect of the Houses of Parliament), including the imposing Tower and the Great Hall, now used as the school’s dining hall.

Barry also added Nineveh Court to the main building to house the Assyrian treasures brought back by a relative of the owners from the Middle East. Most of this collection was sold in 1919 and is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Happily for the school, some smaller items were overlooked, to be rediscovered in the 1950s, when they were sold for £14,000. One remaining bas-relief, from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, was declared at the time to be a plaster copy. The visit to the school of an American historian, Professor John Malcolm Russell, in 1992 led to the amazing discovery that this bas-relief was genuine and it was sold at Christie’s in 1994 for £7.7 million, a record sum for an item of ancient art. The school has invested this windfall wisely, setting aside a substantial amount for scholarships and bursaries and funds towards the building of a new sports hall, theatre and girls’ boarding house.

The series exploring the architectural, political and literary history of the buildings which now house boarding schools continues with royal associations, ancient and modern, a second world war military hospital, literary connections including the Huxley family and a terpsichorean George Bernard Shaw, an Assyrian windfall and a Templar mystery.


The elegant mansion house in which the boarding rooms at Farlington School are now sited dates back to the 16th century. It has subsequently undergone a number of reincarnations, with its present Georgian bays being added in 1803. In 1850 more work was done including new stairs and hall to re-orientate the main front from the south to the east elevation. The school took over the house in 1954, having outgrown the previous establishment in Haywards Heath. In the 1980s the Boarders suffered frequent false fire alarms when the smoke and heat detectors were over-sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity. One former pupil remembers the effect of talcum powder on fire alarms: “The inhabitants of Oval decided to have a talcum powder fight which flew into the air so thickly that it set the fire alarm off. As it happened, that there was a Governors’ meeting in the Library below and they joined us in the hall for the roll call and to await the fire brigade. They were not amused!”

Felsted’s School House is the original school building and was founded in 1564 in the village guild hall, which was at that time facing dereliction after Henry VIII had forbidden the meeting of guilds. It is a glorious timbered building in the heart of the village and is now used by the school as its Preparatory School music department. Downstairs is the village post office and customers are treated to the sound of enthusiastic music-making as they wait in the queue for the counter. When the school was first established – by the infamous courtier Richard Lord Riche - day pupils were known as ‘strangers’!

Frensham Heights - from Edwardian pleasure palace through Great War hospital to unorthodox school.

The Charrington family brewed so successfully in the nearby market town that, circa 1890, the third wife of the then head of family aspired to a gracious house in which to receive her new acquaintance, a list that included royalty and, so gossip has it, her particular “friend” the king. Queen Mary was a visitor (and requisitioned the park railings for her well known war efforts) and Queen Elizabeth (wife of George VI) visited as a child, captivating the gardeners who forgave her mini-raids on the strawberry beds.

The Charrington men were all killed in the First War. The house was sold and became a school in 1925 but not before it had been a hospital for those returning from the Front. The ballroom (now used for concerts and parties) was a hospital ward and the now science labs (very well modernized) an operating theatre.

History in the House 2 continued


The main boarding house of Haydon Bridge High School, Northumberland, is housed in Ridley Hall. The original Ridley Hall, built in 1567, burned down and was replaced by a Georgian building in 1743. Since 1830, the Hall has been connected with the Bowes-Lyon family and in 1891, under the ownership of the Hon Francis Bowes-Lyon, uncle of the late Queen Mother’s uncle, the Hall was again rebuilt in its present form in the popular neo-Tudor style.

Queen Elizabeth the late Queen Mother was born Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. And when she travelled north, she naturally popped in to see her relatives at Ridley. She is known to have slept at Ridley Hall.

In 1947, the Hall passed to the Rev E A Evans, who brought to it from Hexham, St. Nicholas’s boys preparatory school. After the seventeen years as a prep school, and a period as an annexe for the first year students of Northern Counties College, in 1976 it became the main boarding wing of Haydon Bridge High School under the auspices of Northumberland County Council.

Temple Dinsley, occupied by Princess Helena Collge, was mentioned in the Domesday Survey as Temple Deneslai and was owned by Bernard de Balliol. The land then passed over to the Knights Templar and was their most important centre in the south-east. Since their suppression in 1312, there have been many legends surrounding buried treasure but even the Royal Commission “to inquire touching concealed goods of the Templars in the County of Hertfordshire” in 1309, found nothing. The school now stands in a Queen Anne mansion with additions by Edwin Lutyens (pictured as it is now ands a century ago in 1911) but the mystery of the Templars lingers on.

Prior’s Field School in Surrey has strong literary associations. It was opened in 1902 by Mrs Julia Huxley and began with five day girls, one boarder and a small boy. The boy, Aldous Huxley, pictured (below) with his mother, would go on to write the seminal Brave New World in 1932 – just one of the strong literary associations of the Huxley family and of the house, originally called Prior’s Garth, which was designed by Charles Voysey, a prominent English architect of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Julia Huxley was the niece of the poet Matthew Arnold and grand-daughter of Dr Thomas Arnold, the Head Master of Rugby School, immortalised in the novel Tom Brown's Schooldays. Her eldest sister, Mary, was the eminent Edwardian novelist Mrs Humphry Ward, and one of the joint founders of Newnham College, Cambridge.

Friends of the family included Lewis Carroll, W. B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw. The latter was photographed, (above) during a visit to Prior’s Field, dancing in its rose garden – a small, early-20th Century design by Voysey, with a planting scheme by Julia’s husband, Leonard Huxley, in consultation with Gertrude Jekyll.

Prior’s Field girls, too, went on to enjoy literary success in their own right, including Enid Bagnold, the celebrated playwright and author of works such as National Velvet and The Chalk Garden, and crime writer Margaret Yorke.


History in the House 2 continued

The Royal Alexandra and Albert School has occupied Gatton Hall in Surrey since 1949. There has been a Gatton Hall on the site since before 1066. Leofric, who owned Gatton Hall, was killed at the Battle of Hastings and William gave the Gatton estate to his half-brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. The estate never stayed in one family for very long. Henry VIII gave it to Anne of Cleves as part of the divorce settlement and, at one time, belonged to two Scottish private bankers who went bankrupt.

The current design was built for Lord Monson, who made his money out of gin, making it perhaps, technically, a ‘gin palace.’ Lord Monson sold the estate to Sir Jeremiah Colman but in 1934 there was a huge fire. Sir Jeremiah had the Hall rebuilt ‘with institutional use in mind’ and the school bought the Hall and the core 260 acres of Gatton Park, which was Lancelot “Capability” Brown’s first landscaping contract, in 1949. The remaining thousand acres went to the National Trust.

Used as a sxth form boarding house, it is likely to become a house for girls aged 11-13 in September 2012.

Carswell Manor, one of the buildings which forms part of St Hugh’s prep school near Faringdon in Oxfordshire, was home to the actor David Niven who lived here as a boy (and mentioned it in his autobiography ‘The Moon’s a Balloon’). St Hugh’s moved from London to Malvern during the Second World War, after which the school bought the house and grounds from the Nivens in 1946.

St Leonards-Mayfield School is situated at ‘The Old Palace’ – a baronial hall of the Archbishops of Canterbury constructed c.1325. It served as such until the Reformation, when it was gifted to Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Stock Exchange and courtier of Queen Elizabeth I, and it later became the home of one of the big iron foundry families of the Weald.

Ruinous and abandoned by 1740, the estate was gifted to an order of nuns (the Society of the Holy Child Jesus), who undertook the rebuilding of the Great Hall of the Old Palace and its conversion and consecration into a chapel. It was around this chapel in 1872 that the nuns created the Catholic boarding school for girls which still exists today; and the chapel still serves as such.


An iconic place in women’s education, The Elms at St Mary’s School, Cambridge, has a long history of educating the young women of tomorrow. From 1869 to 1889 the house, used today as boarding accommodation for the school’s 90 boarders, belonged to Dr Benjamin Hall Kennedy, author of Kennedy’s Latin Primer, and Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University.

Dr Kennedy was also a staunch advocate of women’s education and, at a time when no men’s colleges would permit women to attend lectures, would find like-minded dons to repeat lectures at their own colleges. Those students were always welcome at The Elms and would sit Tripos Examinations in Dr Kennedy’s drawing room. He fought for women to be admitted to sit the Tripos under the auspices of the University and in 1881, after an impressive campaign to the University Senate, he was eventually successful.

The building was purchased in 1904 by St Mary’s School and which by 1910 was a well established school with twenty-four boarders and nineteen day pupils.

Wymondham College celebrated its 60th anniversary this year. It was established in 1951 on the site of a US Army Hospital and initially the College moved into the Nissen Huts left over by the Americans at the end of the war. These huts served all kinds of purposes - boarding houses, staff accommodation, offices - and, of course classrooms. Although new boarding houses were built in the 1950s and 1960s, it was not until the 1990s that the huts began to disappear. Now there is only one left - the Chapel - and that is a listed building.


Images of boarding

The prizewinners in the photographic exhibition organised by the BSA to celebrate its 45th anniversary, and sponsored by Tempest Photography, were exhibited at this year’s annual heads’ conference.

Congratulations to Monica Greig, of The Dragon School, Oxford, winner of the Years 4-6 category, to Hannah McLean, of Pipers Corner School, Bucks, winner of the Years 7-11 category, and to the sixth form winner, Daniela Modesti, of the Royal Masonic School, Rickmansworth.

Daniela Modesti Prize Winner Sixth Form


Monica Greig Prize Winner Year 4-6

Hannah McLean Prize Winner Year 7-11


Boarding in the Prep? Yes

Please

Godolphin School, Salisbury, has taken the unusual step of opening its boarding facilities to its prep school girls for the first time. SAMANTHA PRICE, Head of Godolphin, writes about the reasons for their decision and their delight at the demand it has stimulated.


Godolphin has celebrated boarding since it was founded in 1726 and boasts a wealth of experience in this field. A feature of the school is its outstanding pastoral care, strong community and family atmosphere. Having myself run a boarding house for four years, I believe whole-heartedly in the tremendous benefits that it provides: building confidence, developing independence within a supportive environment to say nothing of the life- long friendships that are made.

However, market needs are changing and there appears to be a national shift away from full boarding, towards either weekly or a more flexible model. This does not necessarily suit all schools but we all need to be responsive and positively proactive if we want boarding to flourish. At Godolphin, we believe the way to do this is to introduce a culture of boarding amongst our younger pupils-on a flexible basis with a view to encouraging girls to weekly/full board after time. This has been a growing trend at the school in recent years and one on which we wish to capitalise.

Until this September, we had not offered boarding to girls below the age of 11. However, on my arrival to Godolphin in September 2010 it seemed opportune to review the boarding we offer. Paula White - Head of Godolphin Prep- was confident that there was a market from amongst her current pupil body for flexible-boarding in Years 5 and 6. Feedback from research amongst both the prep and senior parents included comments such as 'I would have sent my daughter to board earlier if you had offered it to the younger age group'.

So in November 2010 we committed ourselves to opening our boarding up to the prep girls – a risk perhaps, but one we felt worth giving a go. However, it was essential that if we were to get it right, we would need to offer a model that would give the girls the best possible experience and not simply provide a ‘bolt on’ for a few.

As a whole school, the prep and senior work closely together, sharing some staff, facilities and the occasional event. The senior girls often help in the prep school and there is a genuine affection between the two. It seemed sensible therefore for the prep girls to board with our Year 7 & 8 girls in a junior boarding house. Traditionally, Godolphin has offered linear boarding in the senior school (Years 7-11) with rooms being shared by girls from Years 7-10, Year 11s in rooms on their own and then two separate sixth form houses.

Whilst this model has many benefits and ensures integration between the age groups, the needs of the 11 and 12 year olds, particularly bed times and recreation, are different and a more age focused model will certainly be of benefit to the girls. This new structure will also provide the Year 7 and 8 girls with the opportunity to take leadership responsibility within the boarding house, which is what the traditional prep schools value for their

senior pupils. Not surprisingly, when we announced the new structure to our current Year 7 pupils they expressed some excitement at being transferred to the junior house and the new responsibilities this would provide them with.

The new junior house opened in a completely re-furnished area of one of the current boarding houses - it is bright, warm and extremely welcoming. Named after one of our old girls, Minette Walters, the theme of the house expressed in the rainbow ladders on the bunk beds and elsewhere throughout the house is that of a ladder of success; thus reflecting personal achievement, no matter what it is. Following discussion with the pupils, the house comes complete with a television/games room, art room, music practice area and kitchen. Within the same building will be common rooms, locker and changing rooms for the boarders and day girls in years 7 & 8 so that our day girls have an affiliation with the boarders' house and feel a part of it. This will also ensure that integration between

the day girls and boarders, something very important to Godolphin, remains and, we hope, some will opt to board as a consequence.

Of course facilities are not everything and the launch of the new house is being complemented by the introduction of the junior boarders’ enhancement programme 'Godolphin Plus'. A similar, tailored programme will also be introduced for our older boarders and is an adaptation of what we currently, very successfully, offer our sixth form girls. This programme of boarders' activities has been put together in discussion with the girls and is tailored to their needs

and interests. It will involve such activities as: aqua aerobics, fun cookery, themed international evenings and is varied to include taster Greek and Mandarin along with parents coming in to give talks on areas of interest to them.

Introducing boarding to the prep age group and re-structuring a long established boarding model at Godolphin certainly involves an element of risk. Our initial intention was to start small, with 21 beds for this September. However, the response has been far more positive than anticipated and we have a number of prep girls opting for flexible and weekly boarding, one girl leaving her London prep school to board with us in Year 6 and another with a similar story in Year 5. Current day girls in years 7 & 8 are asking to board next term and, somewhat to our surprise, we were over-subscribed for September and our boarding registrations for September 2012 are also looking promising.

However, giving girls and their parents the confidence to opt for boarding, albeit flexible, at a younger age, will in turn, we hope, determine a healthy future for boarding even within a changing market at Godolphin.

“We are now planning for

expansion! It is still early days of course and the success of this model will be in the quality of what

we offer.“


A trip to Australia gave LOU BELRHITI, Head of Boarding at St Bede’s School, Hailsham, East Sussex, and her colleague assistant housemaster colleague Michael Krause the opportunity of a lightning tour of seven top boarding schools in the state of Victoria.

Victorian resilience

Like many boarding staff, my colleague Michael and I have plenty of boarding experience but that experience is much deeper than it is broad. So any opportunity to widen our exposure to other schools, their staff and students, is welcome. Wanting to make the most of a rare trip to Australasia, it seemed crazy to go all the way to officiate at a mutual friend’s wedding in Auckland without taking the opportunity to stop off in Melbourne to visit a boarding school – or seven, as it happened, on the way. It was a decision we didn’t regret.

Melbourne has several first class state secondary schools but it may also have more non-government school students per capita than anywhere else. Over four teenagers in ten in the state of Victoria attend independent or Catholic schools – twice as many as in the UK – and that figure has been growing since the 1970s. It is a hotbed of competition in education. Melbourne is immensely proud of its academic activity at all levels, hosting the biggest and the best universities in the country. These are universities, significantly, that also have an international reputation for being at the forefront of research into adolescent mental health. Put together with its British heritage and not dissimilar popular culture, all of these factors made Melbourne an exciting and attractive city to have a look at as far as schooling is concerned. It also happens to be a fantastic place to spend a week.

After a few enquiries, mainly through the BSA and its Australian counterpart, I identified and wrote to a handful of the top boarding schools: Geelong Grammar, Scotch College, Melbourne Grammar, Melbourne Girls’ Grammar, Xavier College, Caulfield Grammar. Their responses were instantly positive, expressing a tremendous warmth and generosity of spirit. And there was a bonus, in the form of an unsolicited invitation from Ballarat Grammar School.

And so our adventure really began - seven schools in six days! Once our itinerary was confirmed we took the trouble to do some careful research in order to get as much out of the opportunity as possible. We looked at the websites, read the literature, talked to every Australian we knew and more or less anyone in our circle of acquaintances who had ever been there.

These were schools which were well-off in more ways than one. They excel academically, culturally, socially and in sporting terms. They are wealthy, rich in history and custom, founded in strong tradition but forward-thinking and innovative, unafraid to do something different. There was much to talk about and much to learn.

Geelong Grammar School is the largest co-educational, the most famous and arguably most impressive boarding school in Australia. We were fortunate to spend a night and a day

Scotch College Presbyterian Chapel


there. Located in a vast estate on the edge of Corio Bay, it is a cultured, dynamic, self-assured place that wears its well-deserved fame and huge traditions with pride and with ease. Being out of town there are no jealous neighbouring schools spying over the hedge, stifling its considerable style. It has invested its enviable wealth not only in the infrastructure of the five specialist campuses (such as in its £11,000,000 Hanbury Centre for Wellbeing) but also in pioneering the implicit teaching of Positive Education and that was a topic of much discussion with many of its highly and expensively trained staff.

Its Timbertop campus in the harsh environment of the Victorian Alps, with its extensive outdoor learning programme, is where the whole of their Year 10 spend the year. Prepared to take risks, smart in every sense of the word, global in its thinking and vibrant, Geelong produces students who seem to ooze quiet confidence, bordering on a cool superiority, effectively equipped to play big roles in the 21st century. Rupert Murdoch is, perhaps unsurprisingly, an alumnus.

Our second out-of-town day was spent in the company of the wonderful folk at Ballarat Grammar, a day and boarding school rurally located on the edge of Lake Wendouree. The place was wholesome, hearty, very much in touch with the natural environment and its people were no less so. Many

of the students were children of south eastern Australian farmers familiar with the idea of hard work and hardship and well-aware of the sacrifices their parents were making to give them the opportunity of an academic career, rather than an agricultural one. They came across as being earnest, engaging and down-to-earth, purposeful, sensible and self-aware.

City centre giants Melbourne Grammar, Melbourne Girls’ Grammar, Scotch College and Xavier College were the unashamedly big academic beasts of our trip, massive bastions of learning and culture, huge on sport and tradition and religion, extremely successful, highly competitive and, to be fair, with plenty to shout about. Reassuringly, we also found that they were thoughtful, caring environments, with excellent staff-student ratios and a commitment to turning out reflective, compassionate, ethical individuals of action. They placed a value on creativity and achievement but within a supportive, optimistic setting, providing a range of opportunities for their young people to discover and develop their passions and build their capacities for action and influence - in the words of Xavier, looking ‘not only to the intellectual formation but also the spiritual, moral, aesthetic, physical, social and emotional development.’

‘Geelong Grammar School is the largest co-educational, the most famous and arguably most

impressive boarding school in Australia.’

Scotch College and Geelong Grammar School have been playing against each other since 1858


Caulfield Grammar, with almost 3,000 students, is an enormous amalgamation of three older establishments, offering the only co-ed boarding in the city. Unshackling itself from history, it likes to be seen as the most sophisticated and inventive of the Melbourne schools. Others may regard it more unkindly as brash and unsubtle. A quick look at its relatively loud website would appear to justify that view. However, our experience was of a very open, friendly and lively school, happy to be itself yet keen to keep improving. Staff development at Caulfield, in particular, is taken very seriously with weekly sessions being compulsory for its teachers. Its outdoor education centre at Yarrow Junction, offering a wealth of experiential learning, predates Geelong’s Timbertop and it can also boast the first Australian school’s overseas campus, opening at Nanjing, China in 1998.

In attempting to cover so much in such a short space of time, plainly, we did rather bite off more that we could chew. However, the hospitality and openness of all the schools made so much possible. Due to the faultless kindness of our several hosts (and the superb Melbourne transport system) we were able to gather a lot of information and experience a terrific amount even in a week – much more than we could have hoped to do in fact. Clearly, this project and my account of it is not in any way a scientific study of Australian independent education: it is rather more a narrative of our simple experience but none the less valid and thought-provoking I hope.

So, to sum up, what did we learn? Well for one, we re-learned the value and pleasure of partaking in our own reading, research, reflection and discussion before we set off and during our stay. In the helter-skelter of our term time boarding lives, there is often too little time for considered thought or deep debate as we scoot through the days, from wake up to bedtimes, with rarely a moment for calm contemplation about what we are doing and why, or how.

Secondly, what each of these Melbourne schools had in common was the emphasis they all consciously placed on building the resilience of their students, above and beyond what happened in the classroom, the sports arena or on the stage. Even though they all loudly proclaim their students’ academic excellence, they also recognise the need to explicitly develop their pupils’ life skills, self-efficacy, flexibility, creativity and general ability to prosper in all situations and circumstances, not just as scholars, sportsmen and artists. They

acknowledge this by investing in major initiatives such as the Timbertop and Nanjing campuses or through carefully structured school based programmes such as Ballarat’s Year 9 Self-sufficiency Centre and Caulfield’s School Café, imaginatively run by its Year 10 Business Studies students.

Finally - and this is not something we learned, because it is most fundamental

to the job we do, but it is something that struck us afresh, anew and most powerfully - was the impact, worth and potential of strong relationships in the boarding community, whether it be with the chairman of governors, the house tutor, the matron, the prefects, parents or the smallest person in the House.

I did not write to Ballarat Grammar School but a new, young housemaster there heard about our visit and wrote to me. The importance he placed on his relationships and the way in which he built them was a heartening reaffirmation of what lies at the core of outstanding boarding. Not only did he invite us, he sent us the train times, changed into his best suit, picked us up at the station and introduced us to everyone he worked with, including a rather reluctant headmaster and every child in his house. He did it with humility, enthusiasm, openness, and total delight in his work, pride in his house and with the acknowledgment that the greatest privilege and responsibility in the world is being entrusted to look after and care for other people’s children. Truly, it was worth travelling 10,000 miles for that one vital reminder.

Victorian resilience continued

“Caulfield Grammar, with almost 3,000

students, is an enormous amalgamation of three older establishments”

The café run by Year 10 Business students at Caulfield Grammar Caulfield GS’s campus in Nanjing, China


The $9,000,000 view from Melbourne Girls’ Grammar Schools boarding House

The café run by Year 10 Business

students at Caulfield Grammar


Boarding’s southern extremityDuring the Easter break 2011, BSA course trainer DALE WILKINS was invited to deliver boarding training and conduct an audit at St George’s College Quilmes in Argentina.

Sitting outside the pavilion, gazing out past the cricket nets and across the rugby fields towards the prep school and the boys’ boarding house, with the leaves just beginning to turn brown and fall from the trees at the first hint of autumn, one could imagine oneself to be in any well-established boarding school in the south east of England early in the new school year. Smartly dressed students go purposefully about their business, boys in grey trousers, girls in tartan skirts, both in school ties and sweaters.

But the sun is in the north and the month is not October but April. My view is not of rural Surrey, but of the campus of St. George’s College, Quilmes, Argentina, one of the world’s most southerly boarding schools, and one of the very few such schools for thousands of miles in any direction.

Established in the outskirts of Buenos Aires by Canon J.T. Stephenson in 1898 as a boarding school for English-speaking boys of Argentina and neighbouring republics, the school flourishes today as a mostly day co-educational school, but retaining a small but significant number of boarders of both sexes. Indeed, it is immediately apparent to the visitor that the boarding ethos has been central to giving the school the very special atmosphere it enjoys, much to the benefit of boarders and day students alike.

Many of the traditional physical features of a British boarding school are present, not least the impressive chapel, which dates from 1914, the Sanatorium (1910) and the pavilion itself, which

was established in 1911 to commemorate the coronation of King George V. Today the pavilion is a popular social hub for the school, containing not only café style facilities, but also much of the College’s sporting memorabilia, including pennants and trophies across many sports, polo included, and from all parts of the world. My visit coincided with the latest incoming tour, and I was able to witness a narrow but very exciting last-gasp defeat for the 1st XV at the hands of a visiting New Zealand

side. More recently the College has undergone a good deal of development, particularly around the centenary,

which included the building of the impressive Centenary Hall.

Despite Canon Stephenson’s long stewardship as Headmaster until 1935, for which he was appointed CBE, life for the College has not always been straightforward. It opened with just six students, lost 14 former students in the First World War and 48 in the Second, and in 1959 suffered a

catastrophic fire, which destroyed the main building. Nonetheless, important decisions,

taken at key points in the College history, have laid the foundation for the flourishing community

which exists today. A prep school was established in 1929, co-education came in 1975 and, some ten years later,

the College adopted the International Baccalaureate (IB), today being one of the key IB establishments in South America. 1987 saw the establishment of a very successful sister day school, St George’s North (not surprisingly to the north of the city), and 1988 the arrival of the Kindergarten.

“the school flourishes today as a mostly

day co-educational school, but retaining a small but significant number of boarders

of both sexes.”

Students on the campus at St George’s

College Quilmes


One of the major challenges for a college geographically so far from the mainstream of modern boarding is to keep up to date with modern developments and recent trends in residential education. I was invited by the Headmaster, Derek Pringle, not only to undertake some training with his staff, but also to conduct a mini ‘audit’ along the lines of the welfare inspections with which we in the UK are now so familiar.

Meeting the dedicated and enthusiastic boarding staff, any possible negative preconceptions of what one might find soon melted away, to be replaced by an acknowledgement that we face many of the same issues, but just in different ways; child protection legislation in Argentina is very different from that which we face in the UK (no CRBs of course) but the hurdles and bureaucracy find different forms. Indeed, Derek, despite his extensive experience in South America, is not the only Head at St George’s. In order to comply with Argentine legislation, the College has to have an Argentine Director del Colegio Nacional as well, and in addition to IGCSE and IB requirements, students must satisfy the demands of the Argentine system too.

The boarding houses both had a homely feel, with the girls’ accommodation reminiscent of many similar houses I have visited in the UK. In the boys’ house, there were many similar challenges to those schools in this country trying to adapt buildings built in a different era to the demands of modern boarding, and being met very successfully, although relocation of the house and further development is currently on the cards.

Girls’ Housemistress Patricia Motz and boys’ house staff Andy Lopes and Gaston Antozzi all clearly had the welfare of the students at the forefront of everything they did, as did the other members of their boarding teams and the Deputy Head (Pastoral) Rob Prata. Student voice has been a very strong theme here in the UK for many years now, but we could learn much from the very impressive boarding committee at St Georges, and the way their ideas are incorporated into future planning, Equally, however, I was encouraged by the drive and commitment of those governors I met, all of whom seemed to recognise that the boarders bring something quite distinctive to St George’s.

Now well into its second century, the College faces many similar challenges to its counterparts in the UK. Boarding numbers at the lower age range are a struggle, expanding boarding beyond the traditional boarding clientele is difficult, and keeping the buildings of a standard in keeping with student and parental expectations an ongoing task.

Add to this the geographical isolation from similar schools, and the attendant difficulty accessing support and training, and the fact that the concept of boarding is even more alien to most modern Argentine parents than it is to some parents here, and there is clearly much to be done if St George’s is to retain its distinct blend of the familiar and the unique. With Derek at the helm, and with an effective and enthusiastic team alongside him, it is to be hoped that boarding continues in this corner of South America for the foreseeable future, and that the BSA retains one of its more far-flung associates.

A view across the school fieldDale Wilkins in the pavilion with members of the St George’s College boarding committee

St George’s 1st XV (hoops) in action against the visting New Zealand side


Boarding across the Pond:

By Wilson Hallett

An American Pupil in England

“The first and foremost difference

between British boarding schools

and American ones is the setup of the houses.“


My previous boarding school in America, Woodberry Forest School, was founded only in 1889, an eternity by American standards. Having lived there for four years, I thought that I was a seasoned boarder and would be ready for anything, but Bromsgrove School took me by surprise in its antiquity and tradition.

The first and foremost difference between British boarding schools and American ones is the setup of the houses. Typically, American boarding schools are divided into dorms, not houses, and students live with same year classmates. The friendly competitive nature amongst the dorms is not nearly the same as that with the houses. Personally, I love events with a little bit of competitive air to them, so I was thrilled to be competing alongside my best mates in a number of occasions.

Even though, in my American past, I essentially failed out of prep school singing lessons, there I was on the front line of the house song competition singing my heart out to ‘Wake Me Up’ in front of the entire Bromsgrove senior school of over 800 pupils. We probably came dead last in the contest because I was singing, but hey, it doesn’t really matter. In other house events, I got the chance to see my fellow classmates shine in their natural environment, whether it was house debating, house drama, house athletics, or house football. It gave me a chance to recognize some of the amazing talents of my friends, most of which I didn’t even know they possessed!

Wanting to further my English experience, I decided to dedicate some time to the legendary sport of rugby. England is synonymous with rugby as America is with… well… American football. Americans have attached a stigma to rugby, and that is that it’s the roughest sport in the world, by far. We don’t know much about it, but we know it takes a man’s man to play it. Rugby is a tradition at Bromsgrove School. Taking immense pride in its incredible program, Bromsgrove School has produced some of the finest rugby athletes such as England’s current Ben Foden. So here I am, lean and tall with legs up to my neck, eager to play. What could go wrong? Two and half months later, I understand why it’s the roughest sport in the world when I break my leg.

However despite the gruesome injury, rugby hasn’t left a bad taste in my mouth. I climbed from the fourth team to the third, second and even represented the first XV for a couple of fixtures. I’ve never loved getting ‘boshed’ so much in my life! The brotherhood that existed in those pre-match speeches was a natural high. I got goosebumps every time we huddled up, out of breath, sweating, bleeding, and grabbing each other’s kit. It was sensational. Pure joy.

And while this is only an iota of the experience that I have had over here, the UK no longer seems like a faraway land of kings and queens, dominated by fish’n’chips, red telephone booths, opposite cars, and oppressive rain. I’m proud to have lived in England and to have gone to school here, even for a just a year, and love to call it my second home.

‘Founded in 1553,’ read the sign outside my soon-to-be boarding house at Bromsgrove School in north Worcestershire. Some quick math puts the school at … nearly double the age of my entire country of the United States. Wow. There stood a massive, ivy-covered, brick building that was even more imposing once I knew that it was the former house of the author of ‘A Shropshire Lad,’ legendary A.E. Housman. What had I gotten myself into, deciding to take a gap year to a school in England?

Wilson Hallett was Bromsgrove School’s ESU Scholar 2010-2011


Using technology to support achievement

DAVID GOODHEW, deputy headmaster of Durham School, writes about how technology is being used in his school to track the learning progress of boarding students.

According to the Independent Schools Council, the number of overseas students studying in UK independent schools has grown by 5.5 per cent over the past year. The vast majority of these children will be full-time boarders.

In addition to this, children from HM Forces families currently make up around 10 per cent of students boarding in UK schools. Providing the highest standard of educational and pastoral support for these students and others whose parents choose independent boarding schools for their children is essential to keeping student numbers up.

At Durham School, our key aim is to provide a first-class education to all students, regardless of their background, gender, religion or culture. Founded nearly 600 years ago, the school became fully co-educational in 1998 and is attended by 650 three to 18-year-olds. Approximately a quarter of our students are full-time, part-time or occasional boarders from age 11 onwards.

We are keen to ensure all new students settle in as quickly as possible and this is particularly important for our boarders, who may well be experiencing separation from their families for the first time. One of the ways we do this is to enrol them into different houses, rather than grouping them all together in one. We also give all students at Durham the option to take advantage of an extended school day, which includes the provision of breakfast and supper. Taking this approach gives our boarding students more chances to mix with their non-residential peers. We have found that this helps them to integrate into the school community and encourages them to feel very much part of school life.

A major focus for us at Durham is ensuring that every child gets the support they need to reach their full potential. As part of this, from the age of 11, the learning progress of all students is assessed every six weeks and their achievement from these tests and other external assessments is recorded in our management information system (MIS).

There are some clear advantages to storing this wealth of student achievement information electronically in one place. The system we use enables teachers to access a colour-coded view in the classroom of how students are performing against their learning targets. This makes it easy for them to see who is progressing well and who might not be achieving all they are capable of so that steps can be taken to address any issues a child might be having.

The data analysis tools available allow teachers to track the achievement of individual students or groups; their gender, whether they are full or part-time boarders or from a specific background or ethnicity. Using the data, they can quickly see how the achievement of boarding students compares to that of their classmates or year group. This enables them to highlight where there might be a need to provide some additional support to help raise a child’s attainment.

Staff from our gifted and talented team can also identify those children who are excelling in their studies. If a child is doing particularly well in one area of the curriculum, the team can then look at whether they might benefit from being stretched in some of their other subjects to encourage them to achieve more.

Technology is also helping us to spot where periods of absence might be having a negative impact on the progress a child


is making in school. Teachers at Durham record registration directly into the MIS from a computer in the classroom, rather than on to paper registers. This saves so much time and provides them with detailed information on students’ attendance that can be used to identify patterns of absence. They can see whether a child is regularly late into registration on a Monday morning or if they are frequently absent from maths due to music lessons or other commitments.

It is not unusual for students coming to study in the UK from overseas to experience delays in the process of securing a visa. This can result in them joining their new school later in the term than expected. With the tracking tools available to us, we can keep a close eye on the attainment of any late starters and provide them with additional support, if required, to help them catch up with any learning they have missed.

There are some additional benefits to having access to students’ attendance information alongside their achievement data. Around 10 per cent of students at Durham represent their county, region or country in sporting activities and this is something we are immensely proud of. However, we do recognise that reaching this level of ability in sport requires dedication from the children concerned. Our system enables teachers to keep a check on the progress these students are making to ensure that training commitments are not causing their school work to suffer and if necessary, we can look at ways of helping them find the right balance.

Another area we have been focussing on is improving the way we communicate with parents. Parents expect to be kept up to date with how their child is progressing in school and making sure they get the information they need can be incredibly time consuming for our staff. It takes hours of administration time to produce letters home and the cost of printing and posting them can be considerable, particularly if parents live overseas.

From September 2011, we will be introducing a portal that allows parents to log on and access information on their child's attendance, achievement and conduct online. This will make it much simpler for those parents living or serving in the armed forces abroad to be kept fully informed of how their child is doing in school and will save time and money for the school.

Our boarding students contribute a rich mix of different cultures, backgrounds and experiences that are incredibly important to the school community at Durham. By using data well, we are able to demonstrate the value of the education that we provide to all our students and this is critical to ensuring we continue to attract the best students in to our school, from both the UK and beyond our shores.

Using technology to support achievement

Durham School uses Capita's SIMS Management Information System, which is used in more than 500 UK and international independent schools to manage school and student data. www.sims-independent.co.uk


SOPHIE COOMBES-ROBERTS, a sixth former at Malvern St James School, describes how the Young Enterprise company of which she was sales director used what they knew best – being boarders – to produce an innovative guide for those who follow them.

The Essential Guide to Boarding… by boarders

J’adore is a young enterprise company formed of twelve dedicated and enthusiastic students from Malvern St James School in Worcestershire. This year a group of us decided to partake in the Young Enterprise Scheme which is extremely popular throughout the United Kingdom and, as part of the programme, we wanted to create a product that was both unique and personal to all of the members in our group.

At the beginning of the year, we thought about what we had in common and of course it became obvious- we all attend boarding school! After group brainstorming sessions, we came up with the idea for ‘The Essential Guide To Boarding’, a handbook covering a wide range of topics, from the 'Boarding School Lingo' to 'Your First Week' to 'What to Bring', and draws from our company members' personal experiences.

One of the reasons we, as a company, decided on this product was because we felt that it would have been useful for each of us when starting out in boarding school. We remembered the transition from a day school to a boarding school and as a company we were unanimous in deciding that it would’ve been incredibly helpful to have had something to help prepare us for when we were new pupils in coming into a boarding school.

‘The Essential Guide to Boarding’ is written for the students by the students and we feel this is what makes our product unique. Written by all the company members, it is aimed to provide new and prospective boarding school pupils with an insight into boarding school life. Because we have experienced

boarding school first hand, we have been able to produce a guide which explains the ins and outs of the boarding system as well as including multiple ‘Hints and Tips’ that we have learned throughout our time at a boarding school.

The handbook covers a vast number of topics which we believe make it relevant for students from all different backgrounds. We have specific chapters for international students and day pupils, but of course much of the information throughout the rest of the guide is also applicable for these students.

Topics discussed include: guardianship (for international students), ideas of what to be prepared for at the weekend, how to do your laundry and the different boarding options available, as well as many more. There is something for every single boarding school student!

The guide has been very well received across the UK and many schools have already purchased guides from us. They say they are ‘perfect’ for new pupils. The Guide has also been very successful in Asia and we have sold many copies to guardianship agencies across the globe to pass on to their students attending boarding school in the UK. In addition to this, ‘The Essential Guide to Boarding’ has earned much praise from the world of young enterprise and has won a prize for the most innovative product. The success of the guide earned J’adore a place in the West Midlands finals which we think is a real credit to the product and clearly reflects the brilliant reception it has received.


A Sneak Peak: ‘Getting there early’: A chapter brimming with student insight about arriving at your boarding school as early as possible in order to gain as many benefits as possible.

Coat Hangers: ‘There is often a severe lack of coat hangers as they are one item that everybody forgets to bring with them. If you’re early you can scavenge the entire house looking for coat hangers in empty wardrobes. Or else it may just be easier to buy your own set before you arrive.’

‘Must Haves’: A list of general essentials that will undoubtedly prove vital in every student’s time at boarding school

Food: So, what food to bring? Well, anything from snacks to full scale meals can be useful, but here is a quick summary list:

• Super-noodles: These are great for winter when it’s cold and very easy to make in the microwave. (We recommend Somerfields’ noodles for only 12p!)

• Fruit: Sometimes, school might not provide your favourite fruit, so bring your own just in case.

• Cereal: A tasty snack, which you’ll probably end up eating at all hours of the day.

• Snacks: Chocolate, crisps, Haribo, etc. Although these are not the best to eat all of the time, they are a nice treat in the evening.

• Microwavable foods: Pizza, chips, soup etc, are quick and easy to cook in school when you’re feeling a bit peckish.’

Boarding Slang: An informal list of words commonly used in UK boarding schools including:

• Dorm: Room • Dormie: Room-mate • Exeat: Time in the school term when most boarders go home

for the weekend. It usually happens every three weeks.• Ledge: A legendary person• Tuck: A stash of unhealthy food• Trunk: An old fashioned suitcase

If you are interested in purchasing copies of ‘The Essential Guide to Boarding’ please contact either:

[email protected] – Rosie Baker, Managing Director

[email protected] – Sophy Coombes- Roberts, Sales Director


For the boarding house parent the knowledge that the house is in “a safe pair of hands” is one of the most important aspects of their relationship with their resident staff, whatever the detailed job description they are given. By creating an assistant role in the boarding house, whereby more responsibility and engagement is offered to assistant house parents, the idea of a safe pair of hands becomes a minimum requirement and both the house parent and the assistant are able to reap the benefits.

In defining what can be the most effective way for boarding staff to be deployed it is perhaps best to consider what both house parent an assistant would like from the role and how both can benefit from the arrangement. The right assistant house parent (AHP) can be an invaluable asset both in creating an integrated, functional and happy boarding house and in affording the house parent the much-needed opportunity, at times, to close the door and spend time with their family. The assistant should therefore be able and willing to deputise for the house parent when there is a need.

It should go without saying that the school and the house need those filling the assistant role to have clear and accurate knowledge of the house, the pupils and the policies by which the house is run. This requirement highlights the importance of the assistant not playing the role of foil to the house parent within boarding. Differences in character and

personality between houseparent and assistant are an advantage to the house, but the prospect of the assistant posing, for example, as the pupils’ advocate can create difficulties not only for the house parent but also, in the future, should the assistant take over the running of a house and the pupils struggle to adapt to his or her change of position.

Central to the successful creation of ‘assistant house parent” positions is the notion that they should offer more than that normally expected of other tutors. Entrusting AHPs with responsibility

and giving them a sense of ownership in the house can pay great dividends especially if they are willing to bring their own ideas to the successful running of the house. In an ideal team, there will be a balance of characters each bringing different ideas and approaches to the house; it is refreshing and encouraging for the house parent to have proactive assistants who volunteer ideas or offer opportunities to pupils in the house and do not solely wait for tasks to be delegated to them.

The idea that the assistant should actively look to create and define their role in the house is perhaps most relevant in the area of house events and the levels of provision for pupils. Although numerous areas of running the house remain the sole responsibility of the house parent, organising competitions and activities certainly falls under the remit of assistants too. It is this aspect of the house which can suffer at times when the house parent is burdened with administrative tasks and it is an area where the more creative energy that is applied the better.

It may involve nothing more than organising house photography or pool competitions or something more extravagant such as black tie and social events, too often an aspect of boarding house life which is squeezed between the day to day running of the house or which can need fresh impetus. Furthermore, these events not only help to maintain a good house spirit and offer pupils the opportunity to engage in different types of activities but present an opportunity for the assistant to experience an important aspect of pastoral management. When these ideas are generated and administered by the assistant it provides a refreshing level of support to the house parent and more importantly injects diversity into this vital aspect of boarding life.

A plurality of ideas and opinions, when effectively managed, can provide a real boost to boarding provision within the house and the school. Although consistency is key and there is little or no room for divergence over certain issues regarding policy and discipline, variety is the spice of life where some aspects of boarding life are concerned. The nature of school common rooms means that staff with different backgrounds, interests and levels of experience are all mingled together and by having enthusiastic assistants, who feel their ideas and opinions are valued, new and exciting opportunities for the pupils can be opened up and houses can look to constantly review what they provide and improve upon it.

It is just as important, however, that the school and the house parent should always ask not what their assistants can do for them but also what they can do for their assistant. It would be wrong to assume that all who enter AHP roles do so in order to progress to running a house in the future. For some it enables

Ask not what your assistant can do for you….In his second article on the dynamics of boarding house life, JAMES JONES, house parent of Housman Hall, Bromsgrove School, examines the vital relationship between house parent and assistant.

A plurality of ideas and opinions, when effectively managed, can provide a real boost to boarding provision within the house and the school.


them to keep a firm involvement in boarding and pastoral care whilst they pursue other aspects of their career; others may just wish to continue being fully involved in the life of a boarding house. But for many, in exchange for bringing different attributes and experiences to the team and providing constant support to the houseparent, the AHP expects to gain valuable experience and career development opportunities.

The experience of assisting the houseparent may offer a variety of opportunities for development. Offering ownership of parts of boarding life, from running annexes to supervising monitor teams, allows staff to develop their experience greatly. This goes alongside a greater insight into the day to day running of a house and a clear understanding of the level of obligation this involves. As a distinct part of the team somewhere between HP and tutors it can be argued that it is this management experience that will enable them to seek advancement in the pastoral side of education or to a leadership role elsewhere within the school.

One possible advantage for the assistant is the prospect of being mentored by a more experienced member of staff (although this is not always the case). The house parent therefore has a responsibility to fully involve the assistant as much as possible. On becoming an assistant it can be demoralising to feel that your role has not changed from that of being a tutor. Most people taking on this role will actively want a greater involvement within boarding and by taking the position have demonstrated a desire to seek additional responsibilities. Boarding house parents and the school have a duty to encourage this. Central to this is maintaining good open communication channels. Involving assistants in discussions over policy and potential changes will offer not only the assistant an insight into the running of the house but can provide an excellent way of sounding out ideas for potential problems.

House parents should ensure they take the time to communicate effectively how different situations are managed. Occasionally, for reasons of confidentiality, this may not be possible but introducing assistants to as many different situations as possible can be very effective in helping them to develop their career. Similarly, although assistants will not be involved fully in house parent meetings and issues, it is highly beneficial to both parties to facilitate some involvement in this aspect of the school. This may be through discussing certain issues from the agenda before meetings and ensuring that the minutes from previous meetings are made available to them or holding meetings to which AHPs are invited.

Although I believe that providing a larger role can motivate the AHP and make them feel rewarded for their efforts and more willing to give more to the boarding house, this needs to be managed effectively. When delegating aspects of house management to assistants, it is important to remember that they will often have little or no timetable allowance for their role and may well have other areas of responsibilities within the school. There is an inevitable dichotomy between allocating further responsibilities and considering the time available to act upon them and there needs to be open discussion within the relationship to ensure assistants gain the most from the experience without becoming overburdened.

At the heart of a successful house team is the relationship between its different members. Promoting the role of the assistant house parent benefits not only those fulfilling the position but also to the house parent to whom they can offer much support. But more than this, and most importantly, it can help to improve the living environment of the young people in our care.

James Jones (centre) with assistant houseparents George Browning (left) and Gareth George (right)


Unlocking leadership

potential

A boarding school is a great environment for developing leadership, in both staff and pupils. Wellington College has rejuvenated its pupil leadership programme and KATY GRANVILLE-CHAPMAN discusses what has been learnt in the process.

Wellington College has a long history of developing leadership, which dates back to its earliest days as a school, over 150 years ago, when the majority of its pupils – all boys then, of course – left to join the Army as officers. The school had to prepare its pupils for the leadership challenges of commanding a platoon in conflict.

In order to add more energy to the leadership programme and to improve its reach and impact, the present headmaster decided that a leadership institute should be set up and, in October 2010, the Wellington Leadership Institute(WLI) was launched. The WLI delivers a number of external leadership projects, including conferences, leadership courses and a Festival of Youth Leadership; but I want to focus primarily on what happens at the school and on the philosophy supporting the programmes

We began with a mission statement for the WLI which came from brainstorming sessions and then a series of consultations with all of the groups who had an interest in the College’s leadership programme. This improved “buy in”.

Our mission is to develop leaders with the passion, values and skills to serve and make a positive difference to the lives of others.

To achieve this mission, the WLI’s programmes are structured using this diagram:

Wellington’s core values are the WLI’s foundation and the WLI is supported by three pillars: character, service and skills. Throughout the article, I’ll explain why we have structured the WLI in this way and the methods we achieve to develop our participants’ values, characters, skills and commitment to service.

Values and leadershipWe were clear that we didn’t want our programmes to churn out the kind of confident leaders who manipulate their followers to increase their own power and wealth, so we decided that the College’s core values would make an excellent foundation for the Institute. All of the WLI’s activities are checked against the College’s core values to ensure that we are enhancing our students’ and staff’s understanding of them and their willingness to live by them.

In order to establish what these core values are, everyone working at or attending the College was asked to list values they felt were important and relevant to the school. This was followed by an inclusive consultation process, which culminated in a school-wide vote and the adoption of five core values: kindness; integrity; responsibility; respect and courage.

This now underpins all that the school does including our leadership programme. We aim to develop the type of leaders who will be kind to their followers, be courageous, take responsibility for themselves and others, be respectful and have integrity. We believe that living by the College’s values helps our leaders to strengthen their characters and improves their confidence, whilst giving them a clear set of expectations to aspire to.

Character educationStrength of character is a common trait in leaders who have changed the world for the better. We believe that the confidence that comes with the development of a strong character, allows you to remain true to yourself and to choose the right path in the face of opposition or adversity. Strength of character is also visible to a leaders’ team and so enhances the likelihood of followers choosing to do what the leader would like, or needs, them to do willingly.

To help pupils and staff to develop positive habits of character, it is helpful to reward positive behaviour where possible, rather than just focusing on negative behaviour. The school’s core values can be translated into clear expectations, which also have the advantage of reducing the need for punishments as it is much more obvious what behaviour is acceptable and welcomed, and what type of behaviour falls short.


“Strength of character is a common trait in leaders who have changed

the world for the better.”


It is also very beneficial to have in place a programme that encourages students to draw upon their personal character strengths and to develop positive relationships with others. The SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) programme and Wellington’s wellbeing programme (see http://intranet.wellingtoncollege.org.uk/well-being) do this effectively. Both programmes also cover ideas such as meaning, physical wellbeing and sustainability. Wellington ensures that links between leadership and wellbeing are made clear and both programmes seek to compliment each other. We hope to develop the integration between the two further in the future.

Leadership SkillsOur leadership programmes aim to equip students and teachers with life skills, which will give them the confidence to go out into the workforce and their communities and make a difference. The skills covered include communication (in all forms), moral judgements, logical skills (such as decision making; time and project management), social skills (such as conflict resolution; negotiation; motivating others), physical and creative skills. In order to test their skills and cement the learning, all of our students undertake service projects in various programmes, such as the ‘Social Apprentice’.

All pupils receive about six hours of leadership training in the tutorial programme and this is complemented by more intensive leadership packages in years 9 and 12 which last for a few days. The training is focused not only on skills, but also values and character education. We aim for the pupils to use their acquired skills as they serve the College and communities beyond the school.

Service Organizing and managing charitable projects provides exceptional leadership opportunities for young people and pupils at Wellington design and implement social projects, mentored by social entrepreneurs. Participants gain superb experience in managing projects, time and teams; honing very useful skills for later life in an environment where they will be supported and mentored through challenges and mistakes.

Wellington pupils are also expected to serve their school through taking on responsibilities, such as managing teams to clear boarding house kitchens, through to being the

director of the Wellington Leadership Institute Pupil Board.

We have found it beneficial to provide as wide a range of opportunities for pupils to take on leadership roles and serve the school as possible. We aim for pupils to lead all extra-curricular activities and for each department to have a pupil leadership team. In the theatre, pupils direct plays, run the front of house and the technical support; on the sports pitch students coach each other, organise fixtures and help with selections. The department leadership teams have the opportunity to shadow the head of department; to contribute to lesson development; organise trips; academic extension and peer mentoring programmes. House and College prefects receive tailored and on-going training throughout their time in office and we aim to give them as much responsibility as is feasible in a boarding school environment.

The Wellington Leadership Institute itself has a pupil board who advise on all matters to do with leadership in the College, as well as running and taking a significant degree of responsibility for leadership events, like the Festival of Leadership which was attended by 180 students from around the country.

PartnershipsWe were very keen to ensure that we were up to date with developments in leadership and that we were learning as much as possible about the most effective ways of training leaders, so we developed partnerships with a number of organisations who were willing to help us to learn and improve.

Academically, we are fortunate to have been helped by the University of Exeter’s Centre for Leadership Studies and Cambridge University’s ‘Leadership for Learning network’, based at the Faculty of Education. Exeter University lecturers helped us to source material that gave us a much greater understanding of contemporary leadership issues and current thinking on a range of leadership topics, such as psychology, which we may not have otherwise considered. Through Cambridge University, we have learnt more about the challenges of measuring the impact of a programme as well as important ideas on teacher leadership, another area that we are developing.

Unlocking leadership potential continued


We have a strong parents’ network and we have greatly benefitted from parents’ leadership experiences in business. It has been particularly interesting to learn about the McKinsey and Company Centred Leadership Model, which has distinct overlaps with our wellbeing programme and confirmed our instinct that it was important to integrate our leadership and wellbeing programmes.

We have worked with a number of youth development organisations and learnt about various activities from them. The company that we have found to be the most professional is Future Foundations and they provide fantastic coaches and logisticians to support our internal and external leadership programmes and events; as well as running their own superb leadership programmes around the country.

Because of our history and location, Wellington has strong links with the military and we were inspired by the motto of our local military unit, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst: ‘Serve to Lead’. This motto underpins the officer training carried out here, which is considered by many to be the best leadership training in the world. We were also interested in the importance the Army places on values for its every day operations and in all aspects of its leadership training; so, we researched this further and found that the cohesive effect of the values and the strength they give all of the Army’s leaders, particularly when they have to make difficult decisions, is invaluable in allowing soldiers to lead in the most testing circumstances.

Measuring impactMeasuring the impact has been the hardest part of our programmes to develop and we are still grappling with the challenge of finding effective measurements. We have designed a number of leadership models: a core leadership model and leadership models for specific roles, such as Head of House, sports captain, lead violin and sustainability leader. We will now begin a review process where students can reflect upon their performances using the models, which help them to identify the leadership behaviours that would be desirable for a person in those roles. This will help us see where we need to add more training or adjust what is already there.

We have also used the core leadership model translated into an application form to help the selection of the College Prefects. The form is set out as a table and, for each leadership behaviour on the model (illustrated), applicants are asked to state how and when they had demonstrated this behaviour.

This was effective and we were keen to reward other pupils for their leadership and identify what they had achieved, so we used a similar form, but also asked pupils to state what the impact of their behaviour had been. We give leadership awards out to pupils who have demonstrated all of the behaviours expected of a Wellingtonian Leader and are considering the option of accrediting this with a professional leadership body.

We hope that we have built a leadership programme that develops leaders with the passion, values and skills to serve and make a positive difference to the lives of others, and believe that our programmes can be replicated in other boarding schools.

A detailed list of useful references is available from the author at Wellington College


Royal wedding date for Gordonstoun choir

The 19 students came back to Gordonstoun in their summer holidays for three days of rehearsals to prepare for the wedding. They travelled down to Edinburgh on the day before the wedding for a rehearsal at Canongate Kirk. Escorted by police from Fettes College (where they were being hosted for the evening) the choir were taken to the gates of the Palace of Holyroodhouse. From there they walked up Canongate in front of cheering crowds to the Kirk.

Following the rehearsal members of the choir met with Zara Phillips, Mike Tindall and HRH the Princess Royal, who thanked the choir for their involvement. James Barton and Vikki Macleod presented the bride and groom with a framed picture of the choir, with a message of congratulations signed by everyone on the back. They were also given a CD, a studio recording of their wedding music performed by Gordonstoun’s Chamber Choir. Following the rehearsal the choir left the rehearsal between banks of photographers eager to get a picture of anyone entering or leaving the Kirk.

On the day of the wedding the walk from Holyrood to Canongate Kirk was very special as thousands of onlookers lined the streets, cheering and waving flags. Before entering the church the choir assembled for a photograph, again with banks of cameras opposite. Once inside the Kirk, the choir were placed on the organ loft at the back of the church, with a full view of the whole congregation – possibly the best seats in the house for celebrity spotting!

The Gordonstoun Choir sang two anthems: John Rutter's 'A Gaelic Blessing' and Greg Jasperse's arrangement of 'Amazing Grace' (a piece that saw this choir reach the televised semi-finals of the BBC Songs of Praise School Choir of the Year Award 2011). The choir also supported the congregational hymn, national anthem and closed the Rev Neil Gardner's benediction with an 'Amen' by Orlando Gibbons.

The Gordonstoun Chamber Choir had the honour of performing at the wedding ceremony of former pupil Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall in July.

The Gordonstoun Chamber Choir pictured just before their royal engagement.

“On the day of the wedding the walk from Holyrood to

Canongate Kirk was very special as thousands of onlookers lined

the streets, cheering and waving flags.”


The EditorBoarding Schools’ AssociationGrosvenor Gardens House35-37 Grosvenor GardensLondon SW1W 0BSTelephone 020 7798 1580Fax 020 7798 1581Email [email protected]

The deadline for the next edition of Boarding School (Issue No.35) is 9th March 2012 and should be sent to the Editor at the above address.

Original articles on boarding issues are always welcome. If you have a story please contact:

Students rear pork for top London restaurant

Paul Spencer Ellis, Headmaster at the Royal Alexandra and Albert School, a state boarding school in Gatton Park, Surrey, commented: “Our slow-grown pork is completely organic, without growth hormones or additives. There is a rising demand for this sort of produce as people are increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of food production.”

Jacinta Phelan, Director, Harvey Nichols Restaurants, added: “Royal Alexandra and Albert School is less than 20 miles from the OXO Tower and we are pleased to support them in their aim to involve pupils in the care of animals and plants within their historic landscape.”

Earlier this year, Gatton Pork, from piglets reared by students at Royal Alexandra and Albert School, made its way onto the world-class menu at The OXO Tower, London. Reared by 300 students who are either on the Countryside and Environment BTEC course or at after school clubs in the school’s 260 acres of grounds and woodlands, the traditional breed piglets feast only on food they find on the woodland floor, roots, grubs and organic feed.


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