A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils not only study, but also live during term time, with their fellow students and possibly teachers. The word 'boarding' in this sense means to provide food and lodging.
Many public schools in the Commonwealth of Nations (called private schools or independent schools in the US) are boarding schools. The amount of time one spends in boarding school varies considerably from one year to twelve or more years. Boarding school pupils may spend the majority of their childhood and adolescent life away from their parents, although pupils return home during the holidays and, often, the summer break. In the United States, boarding schools generally comprise grades seven through twelve, with most covering the High School years. Many New England boarding schools traditionally offer a post-graduate year, which is unknown in many parts of the US. Most boarding schools also have day students who are residents of the community or children of faculty. Some boarding schools in the United States feature military training.
Boarding school description
Typical boarding school characteristics
The term boarding school often refers to classic British boarding school and many boarding schools are modeled on these.
A typical modern fee-charging boarding school has several separate residential houses, and in various streets in the neighborhood of the school. Pupils generally need permission to go outside defined school bounds; they may be allowed to venture further at certain times.
A number of senior teaching staff are appointed as housemasters, housemistresses or residential advisors each of whom takes quasi-parental responsibility for some 50 pupils resident in their house, at all times but particularly outside school hours. Each may be assisted in the domestic management of the house by a housekeeper often known as matron, and by a house tutor for academic matters, often providing staff of each gender. Nevertheless, older pupils are often unsupervised by staff, and a system of monitors or prefects gives limited authority to senior pupils. Houses readily develop distinctive characters, and a healthy rivalry between houses is often encouraged in sport. See also House system.
Houses include study-bedrooms or dormitories, a dining-room or refectory where pupils take meals at fixed times, a library, hall or cubicles where pupils can do their homework. Houses may also have common-rooms for television and relaxation, kitchens for snacks, and some facilities may be shared between several houses.
Each pupil has an individual timetable, which in the early years allows little discretion. Pupils of all houses and non-boarders are taught together in school hours, but boarding pupils' activities extend well outside school hours and a period for homework. Sports, clubs and societies (e.g. amateur dramatics, or political & literary speakers or debates), or excursions (to performances, shopping or perhaps a school dance) may run until lights-out. As well as the usual academic facilities such as classrooms and laboratories, boarding schools often provide a wide variety of other facilities for extracurricular activities such as music-rooms, boats, squash courts, swimming pools, cinemas and theatres. A school chapel is often found on-site at boarding schools. Day-pupils often stay on after school to use these facilities.
British boarding schools have three terms a year, approximately twelve weeks each, with a few days' half-term holiday during which pupils are expected to go home. There may be several exeats or weekends in each half of the term when pupils may go home or away. Boarding pupils nowadays often go to school within easy traveling distance of their homes, and so may see their families frequently.
Most boarding schools have what is known as a "lights out" time for boarding students. A lights-out is a scheduled bedtime for students living in a dormitory. It can also occur in other places where there are strict disciplinary regulations, such as a hospital.
Some boarding schools have only boarding students, while others have both boarding students and day students who go home at the end of the school day. Day students are often known as day-boys or day-girls. Some schools also have a class of day students who stay throughout the day including breakfast and dinner which they call semi- boarders. Schools that have both boarding and day students sometimes describe themselves as semi boarding schools or day boarding schools. Many schools also have students who board during the week but go home on weekends these are known as weekly boarders, quasi-boarders, or five-day-boarders.
Day students and weekly boarders may have a distinct view of day school system, as compared to most other children who attend day schools without any boarding facilities. These students relate to a boarding school life, even though they do not totally reside in school; however, they may not completely become part of the boarding school experience. On the other hand, these students have a different view of boarding schools as compared to full term boarders who go home less frequently often only at the end of a term or even the end of an academic year.
Other forms of residential schools
Boarding schools are a form of residential school; however, not all residential schools are "classic" boarding schools. Other forms of residential schools include:
- Therapeutic schools which provide clinical inpatient services for students with disabilities, such as severe anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, Asperger's syndrome, and/or for students with substance abuse and socialisation problems.
- Residential schools for students with Special Educational Needs, who may or may not be disabled.
- Specialist schools focused on a particular academic discipline, such as the public North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics or the private Interlochen Arts Academy.
- The Israeli kibbutzim, where children stay and get educated in a commune, but also have everyday contact with their parents at specified hours.
- In rural areas of the United States, general attendance public boarding schools were once numerous; only one remains today: Crane Union High School in Crane, Oregon. Around two-thirds of its 80+ students, mostly children from remote ranches, board during the school week in order to save a one-way commute of up to 150 miles across Harney County.[1]
