The education of Service children: the boarding option

‘We in the Services have three options: our children have a disruptive education; we board; or we live apart from our families. None of these is ideal for most people.’*

Such was an indictment of the choice facing Service parents starting to educate their children. This guide aims to provide an outline of the various boarding options, sources of where to find the essential information, and how to make the best of all the opportunities, both short and long term, of a boarding education. Not everybody wants to board, but the alternatives of moving school with every change of posting can seriously disrupt continuity of education and eventual realisation of potential. Boarding, therefore, deserves serious consideration.

Although the majority of Service children are educated in LEA maintained day schools in the UK, there are some 500 accredited boarding schools in membership of either the Independent Schools Council or the Boarding Schools Association with a total boarding population of around 70,000.

Service parents are eligible to claim the Continuity of Education Allowance, which provides assistance with meeting the boarding fee. Consequently, Service children make up a vital proportion of those boarding, and their needs and special circumstances are well understood within the schools. In 2008–09 the Ministry of Defence spent £172,844,735 on boarding school fees for 9,090 children from Armed Forces families.** The 9,090 came from 5,710 Officers, 3,320 Non-commissioned Officers and 60 Other Ranks.

Boarding is one of the greatest strengths of British education. This guide considers some of the key issues facing all Service parents, and elaborates on many of the pros and cons. It emphasises the advantages of planning ahead and carefully researching the possibilities. Above all, it is aimed specifically at the Service parent and it illustrates the very wide range of boarding opportunities not always appreciated by the average parent.

We would like to thank all our contributors, particularly the recently retired Chief of the General Staff for his Foreword, our new contributors, and the parents and pupils for their forthright comments on how boarding works in practice. We hope you will find it helpful; we welcome your feedback and your suggestions on how future editions can be improved.

* House of Commons Defence Committee’s Educating Service Children Report, September 2006

** Hansard 2010