The term boarding school often refers to classic British boarding
school and many boarding schools are modeled on these.
Boarding
house of the Presbyterian Ladies'
College, Sydney, Australia
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
extra-curricular 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.
Dormitory
at The Armidale
School, Australia, 1898
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.
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.
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