The opportunity to contribute to this excellent guide has allowed me to read it from cover to cover and appreciate its fund of useful advice. I am a rare contributor to such publications as I tend to put the task too low down a priority list – perhaps an indication of Oundle’s current marketing approach. This time your editor has been persistent: the publisher is an Oundle boarding parent who may hold me to account!

Each contributor to this guide passionately believes in her or his cause – and perhaps such powerful enthusiasm is the hallmark of boarding school heads. Boarding reaches the parts (of education) that day schools do not reach – and the difference between boarding and day pupils leads to many largely day schools maintaining as significant a boarding element as possible in an attempt to foster a boarding atmosphere.

For parents there is the inevitable trawl – first by internet and later by car – of possible schools, usually defined by scope, location or type. You will be impressed by almost all of them and the impact of the school visit will be strong. The brand image will be clear: the children will be well behaved, neat and tidy; the staff will appear intelligent and enthusiastic; the head will seem supremely competent; the grounds will be extensive, and the whole package highly seductive. Children will slip easily into this life, and parents will feel they may access the wider community as and when they wish.
 

Day schools offer quality pastoral care, serious academic purpose and endeavour, and their pupils are inspiring products of their education. But day schools, and those who espouse their cause, may not admit to what they are missing. Boarding adds the extra dimension: it enriches the school experience by total immersion in the breadth of opportunity afforded, and its impact goes far beyond the here and now. Boarding offers enrichment; full boarding schools – and there are precious few proper full boarding schools left – do this in spades.

‘Where is the child going to school?’ is an early question for all parents, and increasingly for children. Whether child or parent makes the decision, though, has little impact on the potential for success at school. Children at different ages make different choices, too. I have heard parents say, ‘We’re going to let our son make the final decision but, at present, he’s just too young to know that he’ll want to board.’ Well said, parents! Efficient family units manage their dynamics carefully and subtle engineering can be useful to ensure the ‘right’ outcome.

This highlights the question of who sets the agenda within a family. Who decides? The family dog because walks at the weekend are important? The younger sibling who wants brother/sister to be as far away as possible? Or perhaps the parent who is determined to be fully involved in a child’s life? There are those who fundamentally believe in boarding and want their children to develop strengths as a result of the environment and culture of their formative years.

Service parents may relish the consistency of a traditional education that provides a framework 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This offers security that, whether the family unit is near or far, school life continues in a clearly defined and purposeful manner. Service family or not, the Oundle experience provides the full boarding routine for busy teenagers, establishing a proper focus and balance between the curriculum and the extra-curricular activities, allowing children to learn, grow, thrive and emerge as wholesome adults.

There are many types of school. The ‘right’ school is usually felt to be the one that suits a child best. There is a belief that the expert prep school head will know his/her children and therefore know the right school for them. I do not doubt such wisdom, although most schools do suit most children. School choices by type are relatively simple: small, medium, large; single-sex, all-boys and all-girls, girls arriving in the sixth form, and co-educational in varying ratios. There is no correct model, no best school and no right answer: that is what makes the process of selection so personal and so fascinating.

The good news is that there are a lot of extremely good schools and it is a great time to buy education. The problem is knowing what you want and ascertaining whether the name on the label is what can be found inside. Looking for a school means looking behind the veneer to discover the detail: wonderful facilities may not always be open; a delightful housemistress may not be quite the same when parents have departed; rugby coaching may not be safe despite the presence of an ex-international; outward-bound training may lack appropriate risk-assessment skills.
 

Full boarding is the full-on choice. It is the most you can get: it is the weekends, the early mornings and the late nights; it is the experience that encourages children towards a positive lifestyle, and it elevates good schools into great schools. In my experience, only full boarding can genuinely enthuse children and generate real passion about their school. Day children just lack sufficient immersion to get the full-blend infusion.

And for me, in this co-educational world, the only choice is co-education. School is preparation for life; life is what you make of it and schooldays are about the challenge of experience. Learning to live with a wide range of other people is part of the desirable mosaic of adolescence. Single-sex boarding secondary schools find it increasingly difficult to offer the organisation of weekend social events. Absence of this part of teenage culture generates a vulnerability within the boarding product that may fracture towards ‘weekly boarding’ where social opportunities are found outside school. Co-education also maximises the range of personal experience to be found within drama, music, debating or discussion of ethical or controversial subjects where boys and girls address issues from different perspectives. The benefits of co-education are therefore to be found inside the classroom and outside.

The number of all-boy boarding schools now represents a small minority in the HMC, even though some of those remaining are among the most revered. All-girl boarding schools have also declined in number over the past two decades. Are those that remain, then, the great bastions of British boarding tradition or the last of the dinosaurs? Children continue to evolve fast and the starkest revelation in talking with today’s co-educationally schooled teenagers regarding the co-education debate is that they are generally unaware that there is an issue.

The two ‘all boys’ schools I have worked in were very different. I moved on from them because I sought greater diversity. The argument against co-education tends to run into negatives: ‘they will be distracted’; ‘they will be over-pressured’; ‘they will get less good results’; ‘they will not be able to grow up gradually’. Such suggestions fly in the face of my experience. What makes a school work well is the structure and ambience – not the system. Oundle has many features that make its system work extremely well. Few of them are related to the fact that Oundle is co-educational. However it is no coincidence that no one wants to turn back the clock to our pre-1990 single-sex status. 

 

 

 

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