Boarding at an independent school

Independent schools celebrate the plethora of opportunities available to their pupils but don’t always work hard enough to interrogate who is taking them up. Many a school will take too great a pride in what is achieved by the prodigies (who would have done well anywhere), and every decent school looks after its strugglers, but it’s in ‘the middle of...

Nowadays, the assumptions and agenda are different – we see physical activity through the prism of wellbeing as much as competition. Sport is a space into which ideas about body image, collegiate identity and community are addressed and all in the context of a far greater awareness of supervision and safety. Long gone are the days when the house captains of...

We can all also recognise children learn best when they are happy, and a crucial ingredient in happiness is stability and the assurance it provides. Learning to cope with change needs to be done sensitively and, although the majority of children will have to change school at some point, repeated changes of school can sometimes hinder academic and skills progress...

Charitable status A certain amount of political interest has been generated in connection with charitable status debates over the years and the media often berates fee-charging schools for the ‘tax breaks’ that come with charitable status. In fact, the allocation of bursary awards far exceeds business rates relief granted to those schools which are charities. Even schools that are not...

Developing thinking skills across the curriculum With the rapidly changing face of our technological landscape, it is difficult to predict what the workplace will look like in five years’ time let alone 50 years. How many of the traditional roles will still exist in the world of tomorrow? The predictions being made by futurists are wide and varied but the...

Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) inspection reports always include detail of the schools’ commitment to SMSC, but what does SMSC actually mean? As there is no requirement for independent schools to have a separate SMSC policy, what should you be looking for when searching for a school that genuinely provides a holistic education?  Holistic education Boarding schools devote a lot of...

Dauntsey’s was founded in the sixteenth century by William Dauntesey. He went to London to make his fortune and became Master of the Mercers’ Company. His will left his London properties to the Livery Company and tasked his executors with building and maintaining the school and almshouses that became Dauntsey’s. Almost five centuries after the school’s founding, thinking about others...

Nearly every independent school offers a broad range of sport, musical and creative co-curricular pursuits. However, not all pupils are talented ball-players or gifted violinists – a range of opportunities to suit the entire cohort is needed. Enrichment options offered by a school can be an excellent base from which to teach lifelong soft skills, especially those of teamwork, leadership,...

As the school curriculum narrows, the boarding school’s emphasis on educating the whole child provides plenty of opportunities to develop a wider set of skills and qualities. At Bloxham, our activities programme offers pupils 100 options, ranging from mainstream sports to minor ones, and from music, drama and art, to astronomy and Young Enterprise. Balancing breadth with specialism, our tutors...

An extra-curricular programme such as the DofE is an effective way for young people to be introduced to outdoor learning without the feeling that they are compromising their time spent in the classroom. Schools often comment that the skills young people learn through their DofE programme can affect their overall behaviour positively, with improved attendance in school and at extra-curricular...