short essay about boarding school

Essay on Boarding School

Students are often asked to write an essay on Boarding School in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Boarding School

Introduction.

Boarding schools are educational institutions where students live on campus. They offer a unique learning environment.

Academic Excellence

Boarding schools often have rigorous academic programs. Students can focus on their studies without distractions.

Personal Development

Living away from home, students learn independence and responsibility. They grow personally and socially.

Extra-Curricular Activities

Boarding schools provide various extra-curricular activities. This nurtures talents and develops well-rounded individuals.

Boarding schools offer a comprehensive education. They prepare students not just academically, but also for life.

Also check:

Advantages and Disadvantages of Boarding School

250 Words Essay on Boarding School

Boarding schools, institutions where students reside within the school premises, have been a part of our educational system for centuries. They are often seen as a means to foster independence, discipline, and a sense of community among students.

Benefits of Boarding Schools

Boarding schools offer a unique environment that encourages personal growth. Students learn to manage their time and responsibilities, preparing them for the rigors of adult life. The close-knit community fosters strong relationships and a sense of belonging. Moreover, these schools often provide superior academic and extracurricular opportunities, enhancing students’ overall development.

Challenges in Boarding Schools

However, boarding schools also present challenges. The separation from family can lead to feelings of homesickness and isolation. Additionally, the pressure to conform to the community can sometimes overshadow individuality.

Boarding Schools in the Modern Context

In the modern context, boarding schools are evolving to meet the needs of today’s students. They are increasingly focusing on providing a balanced environment, where academic rigor is complemented by emotional support and opportunities for self-expression.

In conclusion, while boarding schools have their pros and cons, they undoubtedly offer a unique educational experience. They serve as a platform where students can develop essential life skills, form lifelong friendships, and receive a well-rounded education. As they continue to adapt to the changing societal needs, boarding schools remain a significant aspect of global education.

500 Words Essay on Boarding School

Boarding school, an educational institution where students live on campus, has long been a topic of debate in academic circles. These schools not only provide a unique learning environment but also shape the overall personality of students. However, they also pose challenges and concerns that need to be addressed.

The Advantages of Boarding Schools

The most significant advantage of boarding schools is the immersive educational environment they provide. With access to resources round-the-clock, students can fully engage in their studies, leading to a deep understanding of their subjects. Furthermore, they foster a sense of independence as students manage their schedules, balance their activities, and learn to live away from home.

Boarding schools also offer a rich social environment. They bring together students from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and countries, promoting a global perspective and fostering cultural competency. This diversity can help students develop empathy, understanding, and respect for differences, which are critical skills in today’s globalized world.

The Challenges of Boarding Schools

Despite the benefits, boarding schools have their share of challenges. The most common concern is homesickness, which can impact a student’s emotional well-being and academic performance. Additionally, the rigorous academic and extracurricular schedule can lead to stress and burnout.

Another challenge is the lack of privacy and personal space. Living in shared accommodations can be daunting for some students, especially those who value solitude or come from a background where they had their own space.

The Role of Boarding Schools in Personality Development

Boarding schools play a critical role in shaping a student’s personality. The structured environment helps instill discipline, time management, and responsibility. The opportunities for leadership and teamwork also contribute to developing strong interpersonal and communication skills.

However, it is essential to note that the impact of boarding schools on personality development can be both positive and negative. While some students may thrive in this environment, others may struggle with the pressure and expectations.

In conclusion, boarding schools offer a unique educational experience that can significantly impact a student’s academic and personal development. While they provide an immersive learning environment and foster independence, they also pose challenges such as homesickness and stress. Therefore, the decision to attend a boarding school should be made after careful consideration of the benefits and drawbacks, and the personality and needs of the student. As we move towards a more inclusive and diverse educational landscape, it is crucial to ensure that boarding schools continue to evolve to meet the needs of all students.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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10 Tips for Writing a Boarding School Application Essay

10 years ago
Write with passion and honesty. Make sure the subject you choose to write about is one you are truly interested in or passionate about. Make sure it is something you believe in.
Before writing your essay think about what you are going to write, outline it and organize it so that it flows correctly and make a strong statement.
Use your writing style and let the reader really get to know your personality from the essay.
Spend time to construct a well-written essay. Make sure that you are using good grammar and proper punctuation. Don’t forget to use spell check, but also proof your essay to make sure the words you want are the words written. For example, did spell check give you “sense” when you meant “since?”
Get into some detail. You really want the reader to feel your descriptions.
At the same time, don’t go overboard on the descriptions! Be concise and stick to the requested word limit, if one is provided.
If you are writing about the school to which you are applying you should probably get the name correct . That might sound funny, but if you’re using a similar essay for multiple schools, it can be easy to miss changing the name!
If you write the essay after your tour and/or interview, write about something specific that happened during your visit to the boarding school.
Make sure it is typed with good spacing (1.5 or double).
Proof, proof, proof. Proofread your boarding school application essay yourself, then have someone else proofread it.

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NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY AS TO STUDENTS Randolph-Macon Academy admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.

How to Write an Awesome Private School Admission Essay

Sitting down to write the all-important private school admission essay — is there anything more stress-inducing than a blank document and a blinking cursor?

Writing anything from scratch requires intensive energy, focus, and inspiration — and that pressure is heightened when the writing topic is turned inward. No wonder students (and parents) get overwhelmed when it’s time to complete the essay portion of a private school application!

Helping your child write their private school admission essay can be pretty nerve-wracking. However, it doesn’t have to be.

The short essay questions included as part of most private school applications are meant to provide admissions professionals with a well-rounded picture of your child as a person and as a student. If written thoughtfully, this component of your child’s application can make them truly stand out.

Below are our top tips for beating back writer’s block and crafting a private school admission essay that gets noticed.

Remember the essay audience.

Although the essay is about your student, it’s FOR the private school admissions team. What will stand out to them? What will interest them? What will help them best understand your child and how they learn? Help your child craft an essay with these professionals in mind.

Answer the essay question asked.

This may seem obvious; however, it’s very easy to steer off course when you get into a writing groove. Help your child refer back to the question and any associated instructions while they write. Remind them to try to stick to the word count, and make sure to answer all parts of the question.

Portray personality.

Private schools are admitting people, not numbers. Their goal is to create a diverse, copasetic community in which students grow and are challenged. Your child’s answers shouldn’t be cookie-cutter. The best essay question answers will showcase a student’s personality, quirks and all.

Demonstrate passions.

Private schools are seeking students with different interests and passions. If your child has a unique interest or personal pursuit, the essay can be a great place to explain what it means to them and why it drives their creativity.

Provide a unique perspective.

Opinions are important. If your child believes in a cause or has a strong point-of-view on a topic, talk about why. By standing behind their convictions, your child will demonstrate their critical thinking and leadership capabilities.

Paint a complete portrait.

Regardless of the essay question, you want your child’s essay to work seamlessly with the rest of their application and showcase them as a full, well-rounded student. If the application itself doesn’t allow you to bring your student’s true self to life, take that opportunity in the essay component.

Maintain proper essay structure.

Remember, the essay isn't solely an exercise to get to know your child; it's also an evaluation of their writing ability. Maintaining the proper essay structure with an introduction, body, and conclusion is essential.

Admission officers read a LOT of essays, so really work on hooking them with the intro. Have your child read feature magazine and news articles, as well as the opening paragraphs of books to see how professional authors engage their readers.

Cut the clutter.

After your child writes their essay's first draft, make sure they spend time editing their ideas into a clear, concise answer. Help them proofread, check their grammar, and cut out any extra words or phrases that don’t support their answers.

Get/offer feedback.

Once your child’s essay is complete, it’s perfectly acceptable for them to ask someone else to read it. As a parent, point out areas where they have opportunities to strengthen an idea or fix a mistake. However, resist the urge to rewrite the essay in your own words. Again, your child’s own perspective is what matters!

While the questions asked on private school applications may change, these essay-writing tips will help ensure that whatever story your child tells resonates with your dream school’s admissions team. For more essay tips, read Encouraging Your Child to Write a Self-Revealing Application Essay .

Encouraging Your Child to Write a Self-Revealing Application Essay

How to make a great impression in private school interviews, recommendation letters: who should you ask — and how, first-choice letters: do they help or hurt admission, the final countdown to application deadlines, 11 parent statement tips for private school applications.

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Save time applying to private schools with the Standard Application Online. Apply to any of over 400 participating schools with one set of documentation and a single student essay.

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The Character Skills Snapshot is an innovative measure of student preferences, attitudes, and beliefs, helping schools get to know who an applicant is rather than just what they know from grades and standardized tests—letting their uniqueness shine. Add the Snapshot to your student's application today to help them stand out.

Boarding School Essays: Example Admission Questions

by Joanna | Nov 16, 2020 | Boarding School , Education | 0 comments

Boarding school applications require the student to complete short and long answer essays. It is crucial that the student follow the instructions for completing the essays, including adhering to the required word count criteria. It is also very important that the student write the essays, and not an adult or other student. The student must electronically sign a waiver signifying that he or she wrote the essays to the best of his or her ability.

Additionally, admissions committees can easily determine when an essay has been written by an adult or educational professional. Submitting an application that includes plagiarized content or text written by someone other than the applicant results in immediate exclusion of the student’s application.

Students are not expected to write on an adult level, nor are they expected to write an essay that is void of punctuation and grammatical errors. Students are still learning the components of effective writing, expanding their vocabularies, and finding their unique voice and writing style. Admissions professionals are very aware of these aspects and take these into consideration when evaluating an applicant’s essays.

Students type the essays directly into the online application template. Once the pupil selects the “Submit” button on the application platform, the essays may not be revised or rescinded. Therefore, it is very important that the student read, re-read, and read again his or her submission to ensure that it is written exactly as intended.

Following are examples of essay questions the student is asked to answer:

What is your favorite activity, and why?
How has your community played a role in shaping the person you are today?
What is the most interesting information you have learned recently?
What have you learned from a challenge that you have experienced? How did you overcome this challenge?
Providing one or two examples from your life, tell us what empathy means to you.
What plans do you have for your future? What steps do you plan to take to make your life more meaningful?
Describe a topic, idea, or concept that you find so captivating that you would happily teach a course on it at our school.
Describe the items you would bring when traveling to a new place that would enable others to understand your values and background.
Share a moment or experience that sparked personal growth or a new perspective, and how this has influenced who you are today.
Describe a personal story that is essential to who you are. How will this characteristic strengthen our boarding school community?
Please share with us one of your fondest memories, and how it impacted you.
What reading have you enjoyed in the past year and why?
Why are you applying to our school, and what do you hope to gain from your experience here?
Imagine you are a student at our school and you invite a fellow classmate who is from a different part of the world to your hometown. What do you feel would be important to share with him or her, and why?
What is the most valuable piece of advice you have been given? How has this advice changed the way you see yourself, others, and the world?
How do you define success? Name someone who best lives up to your definition of success.
You have $100,000 to give away; you cannot spend it on yourself. What would you do with the money?

For assistance with the boarding school application process, please contact www.globalacademics.us .

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Boarding and day school students: a large-scale multilevel investigation of academic outcomes among students and classrooms.

$\r\nAndrew J. Martin*$

1 School of Education/School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2 Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, NSW, Australia
3 The Future Project, The King’s School, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Boarding school is a major educational option for many students (e.g., students living in remote areas, or whose parents are working interstate or overseas, etc.). This study explored the motivation, engagement, and achievement of boarding and day students who are educated in the same classrooms and receive the same syllabus and instruction from the same teachers (thus a powerful research design to enable unique comparisons). Among 2,803 students (boarding n = 481; day n = 2,322) from 6 Australian high schools and controlling for background attributes and personality, we found predominant parity between boarding and day students in their motivation, engagement, and achievement. We also found that classroom-average motivation, engagement, and achievement was not significantly affected by the number of boarders (relative to day students) in the classroom. In addition, the effects of boarding were generally not moderated by students’ background or personality attributes. We conclude that boarders have academic opportunities and outcomes that are comparable to their day student counterparts. Implications for students, teachers, and parents are discussed.

Introduction

Boarding schools 1 constitute a major mode of education in many countries. For example, in Australia (the site of the present study) there are an estimated 170 schools with boarding students, and 470 schools in the United Kingdom and 340 schools in North America that accommodate boarding students ( Martin et al., 2014 ). There has been a growing body of research into boarding school, particularly in Australia (the site of the present study). This research has been quantitative and qualitative and contributed to increasing understanding of boarders, their academic and social-emotional wellbeing outcomes, and the factors contributing to these. Research in this area is important because boarding (and other residential education settings) is often a necessary educational pathway for many students for a variety of reasons (e.g., living in remote areas, parents working overseas, choosing education outside home country, etc.). Indeed, investigating boarding school effects involves quite a unique research design in that boarding and day students are educated in the same classrooms, taught by the same teachers, and receive the same instruction and syllabus. Thus, boarders may be considered something of a “treatment” group and day students something of a “comparison” group, with most curricular classroom and instructional features held constant.

In numerous ways, the present study adds to research findings about boarding school students. First, it explores in a large-scale sample, the role of boarding in students’ domain-general academic motivation and engagement (i.e., motivation and engagement in school generally). Second, it extends the domain-general motivation and engagement research by also investigating the role of boarding in students’ domain-specific (science) motivation, engagement, and achievement. Third, it augments prior multilevel research (that focused on students nested within boarding houses and schools; Martin et al., 2016 ) by conducting multilevel research investigating student- and classroom-level effects of boarding status on academic outcomes—e.g., whether the number of boarders relative to the number of day students in a class affects classroom-average motivation, engagement, and achievement.

Figure 1 presents the multilevel model we apply to address these three issues. At Level 1 of this figure are the student-level associations to be tested. Here boarding status (no/yes; or, day/boarding) predicts science motivation, engagement, and achievement and also predicts domain-general motivation and engagement. Importantly, boarding status is a predictor of these outcomes alongside students’ background attributes (e.g., age, gender, Indigenous status, etc.) and their personality in order to ascertain the role of boarding beyond the role of background attributes and personality. At Level 1 also, interaction effects are tested that explore whether boarding status effects vary as a function of background attributes and personality (e.g., whether boarding status effects vary as a function of different age groups). Level 2 explores boarding effects on science motivation, engagement, and achievement at the classroom level—that is, whether the proportion of boarders in a science classroom predicts class-average science outcomes. Importantly, multilevel modeling disentangles Level 2 from Level 1 effects; thus, Level 2 findings shed light on class-average effects beyond individual student effects.

Figure 1. Multilevel path model to be tested.

Theoretical Perspectives

There are numerous theoretical frameworks that can inform thinking about the effects of boarding. Relevant to this study’s substantive foci are ecological systems, human capital, critical race, social identity, and extracurricular activity theories.

Ecological Systems, Human Capital, and Critical Race Frameworks

Ecological systems theory emphasizes the ongoing person-environment interactions that shape human development ( Bronfenbrenner, 2001 , 2005 ). Under this theory:

… human development takes place through processes of progressively more complex reciprocal interaction between an active, evolving biopsychological human organism and the persons, objects, and symbols in its immediate external environment. To be effective, the interaction must occur on a fairly regular basis over extended periods of time ( Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 1998 , p. 996).

We contend that boarding represents a somewhat intensive and on-going process of interactions between student and environment—interactions that have potential to shape students’ academic outcomes ( Martin et al., 2014 , 2016 ). In fact, given the salient contextual aspects of boarding, it is perhaps not surprising that Bronfenbrenner (1970) conducted one of the earliest formal investigations of boarding effects. According to Bronfenbrenner, because the boarding context plays a different role in shaping children’s academic development, it is conceivable boarding students’ academic outcomes may differ from those of day students.

Bass (2013) draws on Bourdieu’s (1986) ideas around social and educational capital to explore the potential that boarding may (or may not) hold for improving life chances for disadvantaged youth through opportunities for meeting their social and educational needs. At the same time, however, these capital theories and their positive contentions do not always apply to some groups of boarding students, e.g., due to a lack of supporting data ( Guenther and Fogarty, 2018 ). Also, human capital theory has been connected with other pertinent theories such as critical race theory ( Aleman, 2013 ) that might suggest potentially challenging perspectives on boarding effects, particularly for some student groups. For example, critical race theory has been applied as a lens to understand boarding school for Indigenous students ( Benveniste et al., 2019 ). For these students, boarding school may reproduce dominant cultural values through their daily practices, policies and procedures that are not appropriately sensitive or supportive of Indigenous students and their cultural and social-emotional needs.

Social Identity Theory

Social identity theory is also relevant. Individuals’ self-concepts are based on their membership to their social group ( Tajfel, 1978 ; Tajfel and Turner, 1986 ). Social identities are most influential when the individual has strong emotional connections to a group and when membership in a particular group is considered by the individual to be central to their self-concept. The individual garners self-esteem through affiliation with the group, typically through influential processes such as within-group assimilation (pressure to conform to the group’s norms) and intergroup bias (favorably appraising one’s own group relative to other groups). These processes are particularly powerful in peer groups ( Leaper, 2011 ). This being the case, there have been applications of social identity theory to the educational context. Mavor et al. (2017) , for example, have described how the “self” is not a fixed entity among students, but amenable to variation as a function of change in experience, including formal and informal learning at school. These ideas are particularly relevant when considering students who experience a boarding context for their residential experience and who are taught within specific classrooms for their educational experience. The present study and its multilevel design are ideally placed to investigate these processes in terms of the development of boarding and day students’ academic outcomes at school generally and also in science classrooms.

Extracurricular Perspectives

Extracurricular activity is any out-of-class involvement that absorbs students’ energy, time, and attention ( Marsh and Kleitman, 2002 ), and as such, boarding can be considered a form of extra-curricular activity. The “identification/commitment” model of extracurricular activity ( Marsh, 1992 ) proposes that school-based extracurricular activities can “improve school identification, involvement, and commitment in a way that enhances narrowly defined academic outcomes” ( Marsh and Kleitman, 2002 , p. 471). It has been found that school-based extracurricular activities are more likely to increase students’ affiliation with the school ( Fredricks and Eccles, 2005 ). Following from this, Martin et al. (2014) proposed that context-specific affiliation (e.g., school affiliation) boosts students’ identification with and commitment to that context, resulting in positive academic outcomes. They further proposed that boarding may afford greater student activity at and with the school—indeed, being resident at school may also involve a greater requirement or expectation to be involved in extra-curricular activities. Thus, it is possible that one’s boarding status is linked with adaptive academic outcomes, consistent with what might be hypothesized for school-based extracurricular activity under the “identification/commitment” perspective ( Marsh and Kleitman, 2002 ). However, the counterpoint to this is that time spent in one activity comes at the expense of potential development in other parts of life ( Marsh and Kleitman, 2002 ); for example, boarding may deprive students of necessary development opportunities (such as what they might gain at home), and potentially have negative effects.

Research Relevant to the Boarding Experience

To date, research into boarding has revealed a somewhat mixed body of results, finding positive, negative, or generally null (or equivocal) effects in boarders’ academic and social and emotional outcomes. It is also the case there are different student groups for whom boarding is a more salient educational option and research has identified effects particular to these students as well. This research is briefly reviewed.

Positive and Negative Effects of Boarding

The Association of Boarding Schools ( The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS), 2003 , 2013 ) compared the experiences of U.S boarding students and day students. Findings showed that boarding students were more likely to report they were satisfied with their academic experience and were more likely to report that school prepared them for college. In a qualitative investigation, White’s (2004) study of Anglo-Australian and overseas students suggested that boarding instills independence and acceptance of cultural diversity. Also, in qualitative work, Bass (2013) found that boarding for disadvantaged students enhanced their exposure to social and educational capital. An Australian study by Martin et al. (2014) found predominant parity between boarding and day students (described below), but where small effects were identified, they favored boarders. These studies thus suggest potentially positive outcomes for boarding students.

There is also research documenting negative effects of boarding for some children. Lester and Mander (2020) investigated mental health and wellbeing among high school boarders (boys) as they transitioned to and into boarding school. They found increases in emotional problems among boarding students over time. They also found that academic motivation declined over time; however, this was the case for both boarders and day students. In longitudinal research, Mander and Lester (2017) found that boarding and day students reported increases in depression, anxiety, and emotional symptoms between Grades 7 and 9, but that boarding students reported higher levels of anxiety and stress than day students at the end of Grade 8. It has also been documented how some boarding schools are contexts perpetuating institutional and societal power structures and problematic ideologies—such as those around gender ( Khan, 2010 ; Finn, 2012 ; also see Duffell, 2000 ; Schaverien, 2011 for other analyses of negative boarding effects).

Null Boarding Effects

There is also research showing there is not a major difference in educational outcomes when comparing boarding and day school students. As noted above, Martin et al. (2014) conducted a large-scale Australian study and found relatively few differences (with small effect sizes) in academic wellbeing (e.g., domain-general academic motivation and engagement) and personal wellbeing (e.g., peer relations, mental health, etc.) when comparing boarding and day students in the same school. In a similar vein, in a longitudinal study of students transitioning from day to boarding status, Downs (2002) found no major changes in self-concept through this transition. Behaghel et al. (2017) found that disadvantaged students in boarding initially experienced low levels of wellbeing, but their wellbeing adjusted during their boarding experience. They also found boarders experienced academic gains 2 years after commencing boarding, but this effect did not generalize across students (it was stronger for students higher in initial academic ability).

Insights From Particular Student Groups

It is also the case that particular student groups have a more long-established history of attending boarding school. On the international stage, overseas students are one such group (usually because their parents are working in another country). In the Australian context (the site of the present study), boarding has been a major educational pathway for Indigenous students, with most research identifying mixed yields in the boarding school experience for these students. For example, in a study of Indigenous girls in a residential college it was found they enjoyed their residential experience and the new friendships developed, but also found that homesickness and lifestyle restrictions were a challenge for the girls ( English and Guerin, 2017 ). These findings were similar to a study by MacDonald et al.(2018 ; see also Guerin and Pertl, 2017 ) where school leaders and Indigenous students reported that boarding allowed enhanced career opportunities and health outcomes, but that there were issues to navigate to attain these outcomes such as homesickness, racism, and post-school transition difficulties. Guenther and Fogarty(2018 ; see also Guenther et al., 2020 ) identified the positive possibilities of boarding school for Indigenous students, but also noted the evidence does not always support the positive potential. They suggested that when interpreting Indigenous students’ development through cultural and human capital lenses, there emerge potential problems and difficulties in boarding for Indigenous students that have significant implications for educational policy. Indeed, quantitative research among high school Indigenous boarders supports this, finding lower scores on resilience and psycho-social wellbeing. Also, when these students transitioned back to their community, they reported less connectedness with family and community and even lower levels of resilience and psycho-social wellbeing ( Redman-MacLaren et al., 2019 ).

Summary and Focus of This Study

Taken together, it is evident the diversity of research methodologies that have examined the experiences and outcomes of boarding, has yielded varied findings. Each has informed a distinct aspect of the boarding phenomenon, both positive and negative. The present study adds to what is known by addressing two novel dimensions in this space. First, given that boarding students are typically taught in the same classes as day students, what is the effect of the relative proportion of boarders in a class on class-average academic outcomes? For example, does the presence of relatively more (or fewer) boarders in a class affect class-average outcomes? Second, prior research has investigated the effects of boarding on domain-general academic outcomes (e.g., motivation in school generally), but we do not know if such findings generalize to specific school subjects. We therefore investigate the effects of boarding on domain-general (in school, generally) and domain-specific (in science) academic outcomes. Figure 1 shows the multilevel processes we investigate (described above).

Domain-General and Domain-Specific Outcomes, Background Attributes, and Multilevel Considerations

Target domains and outcomes under focus.

As noted, we focus on domain-general (i.e., in school, generally) academic outcomes and domain-specific academic outcomes. Our domain-specific focus is science—specifically motivation, engagement, and achievement in science. Exploring these issues in science is somewhat topical because there are concerning trends in science achievement and science pathways (especially among “Western” nations). In Australia, for example, achievement in science declined in the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS; Thomson et al., 2016 ). In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the long-term change in Australia’s mean performance in science over the period of its participation demonstrates one of the largest decreases among PISA-participating countries ( OECD, 2020 ). Also, science participation and enrollments among senior school students demonstrate long-term decline ( Office of the Chief Scientist, 2014 ) and there is concern about students’ declining interest in science in high school ( Tröbst et al., 2016 ). Thus, motivation, engagement, and achievement have been identified as outcome targets for improvement in science and there have been recommendations for researchers to explore factors that may be implicated in these outcomes ( Ross and Poronnik, 2013 ; Abraham and Barker, 2015 ). Our study therefore investigates the role of educational context (specifically, boarding vs. day status) as one potential factor. Importantly, to ascertain if potential boarding status effects are distinct to science or not, we also assess the role of boarding status in motivation and engagement for school in general. In operationalizing motivation and engagement as “outcomes” in this study, we do recognize that they can also be considered as “input” or predictor factors for achievement and other academic outcomes. We herein position them as outcomes because it is more feasible that boarding status and background attributes such as gender, SES, etc. predict motivation and engagement, than vice versa. Thus, motivation and engagement can be either a means to desirable outcomes, or desirable outcomes in their own right—and it is the conceptualizing, research questions, and research design that determine where in the educational process they are modeled ( Marsh and Martin, 2011 ; Martin, 2012 )—viz. “outcomes” in the case of the present study.

Because we seek to systematically build on the recent large-scale quantitative study by Martin et al. (2014) , we adopt the main motivation and engagement measures employed by them; namely, positive motivation (e.g., self-efficacy), positive engagement (e.g., persistence), negative motivation (e.g., anxiety), and negative engagement (e.g., self-handicapping). These are all operationalized through the Motivation and Engagement Scale that has domain-general ( Martin, 2007 ) and domain-specific (including in science; Green et al., 2007 ) forms. For achievement, we administer an in-survey science test that assesses students on the extent to which they have acquired core information from the state science syllabus.

Background Attributes Important to Consider

It is possible that boarding status may be associated with various student background attributes that are also linked with motivation, engagement, and achievement. To understand the unique effects of boarding, it is thus important to include such attributes in modeling in order to partial out their potential influence. Martin et al. (2014) identified numerous such factors, including age, gender, socio-economic status, language background, Indigenous status, parent education, prior achievement, and personality. For example, they found that alongside boarding status, parents’ education, prior achievement, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness all positively predicted positive motivation—while prior achievement, conscientiousness, and agreeableness negatively predicted negative motivation (and neuroticism positively predicted negative motivation). Furthermore, if boarding represents a distinct educational ecology and socializing environment ( Bronfenbrenner, 1970 ; Holden et al., 2010 ), then time spent in that environment (i.e., years in boarding school) may affect one’s identification with and internalization of that environment, including academic effects of the experience. Thus, background attributes do explain variance in this study’s academic outcomes beyond the effects of boarding status. Accordingly, alongside the predictive role of boarding status, these background attributes are also included in the present study as predictors of motivation, engagement, and achievement (i.e., shared variance is controlled for; see Figure 1 ).

Furthermore, according to Martin et al. (2014) , it is also possible that background attributes may moderate the effects of boarding. For instance, perhaps boarding effects vary as a function of students’ age, Indigenous status, personality, etc. In Australia, boarding is identified as one means by which distant students (e.g., Indigenous, rural, or remote) can access education (e.g., Curto and Fryer, 2011 ; MacDonald et al., 2018 ; Osborne et al., 2019 ; Guenther et al., 2020 ). Also, we earlier identified research revealing a negative history of boarding school for some students and in part this has been attributed to the commencement of boarding at a young age ( Duffell, 2000 ). Although our study is conducted in high schools, we can test if age moderates the effects of boarding on academic outcomes. Or, it may be that the somewhat social nature of residential education is better suited to students high in extraversion. Thus, we include interaction terms (e.g., boarding status × Indigenous status, boarding status × age, boarding status × extraversion, etc.) to test for the potential moderating role of the study’s background attributes (see Figure 1 ).

Multilevel Considerations

There is widespread recognition of how important it is to analyze hierarchical data in appropriate ways ( Marsh et al., 2012 ). In our study we have students nested within classrooms and therefore conduct multilevel modeling to account for this and to understand variance attributable to student- and classroom-levels. There are known statistical biases associated with single-level research designs (e.g., dependencies within groups; confounding of within- and between-group variables) and multilevel approaches aim to resolve these biases (for discussions see Goldstein, 2003 ; Marsh et al., 2008 ; Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002 ). To our knowledge only one study has investigated boarding from a multilevel perspective— Martin et al. (2016) investigated motivation and social climates among students nested within boarding houses that were nested within schools (thus, student-, house-, and school-level effects).

Our study differs from the Martin et al. (2016) work by exploring student- and classroom-level effects. Specifically, we investigate whether the proportion of boarding students (relative to day students) in a class has a significant bearing on class-average motivation, engagement, and achievement. Multilevel modelers have established the reciprocity of individual and group dynamics: individuals can affect the group to which they belong and in turn the group can affect these individuals ( Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002 ; Goldstein, 2003 ; Marsh et al., 2008 ). This raises the question as to whether a critical mass of boarding students in a classroom affects overall class-average outcomes. For example, does the distinct socialization experience of boarding ( Holden et al., 2010 ) lead to a cohesion or collective identity among boarders in a classroom such that they evince distinct effects relative to day student counterparts in the same classroom? By capturing data on science motivation, engagement, and achievement in science classrooms, our research design could address this question.

When conducting multilevel modeling it is also important to establish whether climate or context effects are being investigated. Climate refers to shared perception of a characteristic of the group (e.g., classroom) that is common to members (e.g., students) in that group. For climate variables, the group referent is usually explicit in the item, indicator, or question (e.g., “… students in this classroom try hard”; Marsh et al., 2012 ). However, when the item referent is the individual (e.g., “I try hard”) and the item is aggregated “up” to also create a classroom-level variable, it is known as a context effect ( Marsh et al., 2012 ). As is evident in Materials below, in our study all variables at student- and classroom-level are context factors.

Aims of the Present Study

There were three main aims of the present investigation. The first aim was to explore, in a large-scale sample, the role of boarding in students’ domain-general academic motivation and engagement. The second aim was to also explore the role of boarding in students’ domain-specific (science) motivation, engagement, and achievement. The third aim was to investigate the association between the proportion of boarders in a classroom (relative to day students) and classroom-average motivation, engagement, and achievement—beyond the student-level motivation, engagement, and achievement relevant to the first two aims. Figure 1 presents the multilevel path model addressing these three aims.

Participants were 2,803 high school students from 6 Australian schools that comprised both boarding and day students. Students were surveyed in 224 science classrooms (mean class size = 11.68 students; sufficient to estimate classroom effects and not unduly disproportionate to the staff-to-student ratio for high schools in the independent school sector, taking into account non-teaching staff numbers, non-participation, student absences, and any students not receiving parental participation consent; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019 ). Seventeen percent ( n = 481) of students were boarders; 83% ( n = 2,322) were day students. Thirty-five percent of boarders had been boarding for less than 1 year, 31% for 1–2 years, and 34% for 3 years and over.

All schools were independent schools (i.e., not government or systemic) and located in Sydney, New South Wales (Australia’s most populous state). The average school size was 1,801 total students enrolled. Regarding the socio-demographics of the school, in 2018 (the year data were collected), 23% of the students enrolled within the 6 schools spoke a language other than English at home and 1% of students enrolled within the 6 schools identified as Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander ( Australian Curriculum Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2020a ). For school socio-economic status, the average Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage (ICSEA) score for the schools sampled is 1,145 (compared to the national M = 1,000; Australian Curriculum Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2020a ). Regarding numeracy achievement in the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), the mean numeracy score of the 6 schools sampled was M = 626 (compared to the national M = 572; Australian Curriculum Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2020a,b ). Regarding literacy in NAPLAN, the mean literacy score of the 6 schools sampled was M = 593 (compared to the national M = 553; Australian Curriculum Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2020a,b ). Taken together, these trends indicate that the 6 schools perform above the national average.

Of the 6 schools, 1 school was co-educational, 1 school was a single-sex girls’ school, and 4 schools were single-sex boys’ schools. This being the case, the majority of students were boys (92%). This is disproportionate, but we point out that: (a) multigroup (male vs. female) confirmatory factor analysis of the motivation and engagement measures suggested scalar invariance (the minimum criterion for invariance; Van de Schoot et al., 2012 ) as a function of gender, with no change greater than 0.01 for CFI or greater than 0.015 for RMSEA ( Chen, 2007 ; Cheung and Rensvold, 2002 ), (b) in preliminary analyses (see Table 2 ) there were no gender differences in the proportion of boarders to day students, (c) there were no correlations ( Table 2 ), predictive main effects ( Table 3B ), or moderating effects (viz. boarding/day status × gender) between gender and outcome variables that attained our minimum benchmark for interpretability, (d) as we show below our findings align with those of Martin et al. (2014) whose research design we followed and which comprised relatively equal numbers of boys and girls, and (e) we selected a random sample of 8% boys to match the 8% girls and re-ran the final Step 3 model (see section “Data Analysis,” below), also finding that the only three boarding effects approaching our minimum benchmark for interpretability were the same three boarding effects that approached or attained our minimum benchmark for interpretability in the full sample ( Table 3B ). We thus tentatively conclude that our gender composition did not unreasonably impact factors and empirical associations in this study.

The average age of students was 14.14 years ( SD = 1.29; boarding students M = 14.47, SD = 1.25; day students M = 14.07, SD = 1.29). Eleven percent of the sample were from a non-English speaking background (boarding students 10%; day students 11%). Six percent were Indigenous students (boarding students 9%; day students 5%). Students rated their mother’s and father’s level of education from 1 (“no formal qualifications”) to 6 (“university undergraduate or higher degree”) (sample M = 5.14, SD = 1.28; boarding students M = 4.71, SD = 1.45; day students M = 5.23, SD = 1.22). Students’ socio-economic status (SES) based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics Index of Relative Socio-Economic Advantage and Disadvantage classification (sample M = 1120, SD = 65; boarding students M = 1035, SD = 93; day students M = 1137, SD = 41) was higher than the national average ( M = 1000, SD = 100). As shown in Figure 1 , each of these background factors was included in formal modeling to control for their influence in effects.

Human ethics approval was provided by the lead researcher’s institution. Approval was then received from each school principal agreeing to their school’s participation. Parents/carers and participating students then both provided consent. The online survey of motivation and engagement (as well as a science test) was administered to students during a science lesson in the second term (of four school terms) of 2018. Students were instructed to respond to the survey and test on their own. They were also informed that teachers could provide assistance with any procedural aspects of the process, but that teachers could not help students in answering specific items.

Science Motivation and Engagement

Science motivation and engagement were assessed using the Motivation and Engagement Scale—High School (MES-HS; Martin, 2015 ), adapted to science ( Green et al., 2007 ). Positive motivation in science comprised mastery orientation (e.g., “I feel very pleased with myself when I do well in this science class by working hard”; 4 items), self-efficacy (e.g., “If I try hard, I believe I can do well in this science class”; 4 items), and valuing (e.g., “Learning in this science class is important”; 4 items). Positive science engagement comprised task management (e.g., “When I study for this science class, I usually try to find a place where I can study well”; 4 items), planning behavior (e.g., “I try to plan things out before I start working on homework or assignments for this science class”; 4 items), and persistence (e.g., “If I don’t give up, I believe I can do difficult schoolwork in this science class”; 4 items). Negative science motivation was measured with anxiety (e.g., “When exams and assignments are coming up in this science class, I worry a lot”; 4 items), failure avoidance (e.g., “Often the main reason I work in this science class is because I don’t want to disappoint my parents”; 4 items), and uncertain control (e.g., “I’m often unsure how I can avoid doing poorly in this science class”; 4 items). Negative science engagement was assessed via disengagement (e.g., “I’ve pretty much given up being involved in things in this science class”; 4 items), and self-handicapping (e.g., “I sometimes put assignments and study off until the last moment, so I have an excuse if I don’t do so well in this science class”; 4 items). Students rated items on a scale of 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree). In previous research, these measures are shown to be normally distributed, reliable, and validated with educational outcomes (for review see Liem and Martin, 2012 ), including in science ( Green et al., 2007 ). Because the science motivation and engagement items in this study were directly relevant to the classrooms in which students were responding to the survey (i.e., their science lesson/class), we modeled the science motivation and engagement factors at Level 1 (L1, student-level) and at Level 2 (L2, class-level).

For this study we focused on the 4 higher order MES factors (positive motivation, negative motivation, positive engagement, negative engagement) that were estimated by (a) aggregating (mean scoring) the items of each first order MES factor (e.g., the 4 items for self-efficacy) to create 11 MES scale scores (e.g., a self-efficacy scale score) and (b) using these scale scores to create an error-adjusted mean score for each of the 4 higher order factors. Error adjusted scores were derived using the following formula: σ h 2 ∗ (1 −ω h ), where σ h 2 is the estimated variance of and ω h is the reliability estimate of the motivation and engagement factor (h) at either L1 (student) or L2 (class; Hayduk, 1987 ; see also Cole and Preacher, 2014 ). Error-adjusted scores were used because they help avoid unreliable standard errors and reduce the risk of inflated parameter estimates ( Cole and Preacher, 2014 ). This yielded standardized loadings as follows: positive science motivation, L1 = 0.96 and L2 = 0.98; positive science engagement, L1 = 0.94 and L2 = 0.95; negative science motivation, L1 = 0.93 and L2 = 0.87; and negative science engagement, L1 = 0.92 and L2 = 0.93. As shown in Table 1 , these factors were normally distributed. Table 1 also shows acceptable reliability ( McNeish, 2018 ) at L1 and L2 for positive motivation (L1ω h = 0.83; L2ω h = 0.98), positive engagement (L1ω h = 0.84; L2ω h = 0.96), negative motivation (L1ω h = 0.69; L2ω h = 0.87), and negative engagement (L1ω h = 0.72; L2ω h = 0.95).

Table 1. Descriptive and measurement properties for outcome variables.

Table 2. Multilevel correlations: students and classrooms.

Domain-General Motivation and Engagement

Domain-general academic motivation and engagement were assessed using the short form of the Motivation and Engagement Scale—High School (MES-HS; Martin, 2015 ). This measures all 11 factors represented in the Motivation and Engagement Scale, but does so via one item per factor. Single-item measures can present issues with reliability; however, because the larger research program from which these data emanate is focused on science, the full MES (44-items; see science motivation and engagement, above) was deemed too long. Therefore, the validated short form ( Martin et al., 2015 ) was used. Also to note is research suggesting single-item scales have merit in cases where long scales are not able to be used (e.g., see Gogol et al., 2014 ).

Positive domain-general academic motivation constituted self-efficacy (“I believe I can do well in my schoolwork”), valuing (“What I learn in my schoolwork is important and useful”), and mastery orientation (“In my schoolwork, I am focused on learning and improving more than competing and being the best”). Positive engagement comprised planning behavior (“I plan out how I will do my schoolwork and study”), task management (“I use my study/homework time well and try to study and do homework under conditions that bring out my best”), and persistence (“I persist at schoolwork even when it is challenging or difficult”). Negative motivation comprised anxiety (“I get quite anxious about schoolwork and tests”), failure avoidance (“I mainly do my schoolwork to avoid failing or disapproval from parents or the teacher/s”), and uncertain control (“I don’t think I have much control over how well I do in my schoolwork”). Finally, negative engagement comprised self-handicapping (“In my schoolwork, I sometimes reduce my chances of doing well [e.g., waste time, disrupt others, procrastinate]”) and disengagement (“I often feel like giving up in my schoolwork”). Students rated items on a scale of 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree).

Because domain-general motivation and engagement refer to general academics (not just science or science lessons/classes), we modeled it at L1 (student-level), not at L2 (science class-level). As with science motivation and engagement, we focused on the 4 higher order MES factors (positive motivation, negative motivation, positive engagement, negative engagement) that were estimated by aggregating (mean scoring) the items of each higher order MES factor (e.g., the 3 items for positive motivation) to create 4 domain-general motivation and engagement scores and then deriving an error-adjusted mean score for each of these 4 scores. This was done using the same formula as was used for science motivation and engagement (see above; Hayduk, 1987 ; Cole and Preacher, 2014 ). This yielded standardized loadings as follows: positive domain-general motivation, L1 = 0.94; positive domain-general engagement, L1 = 0.94; negative domain-general motivation, L1 = 0.95; and negative domain-general engagement, L1 = 0.91. We found generally acceptable reliability for positive motivation (L1ω h = 0.76), positive engagement (L1ω h = 0.83), negative motivation (L1ω h = 0.61), and negative engagement (L1ω h = 0.57; to note is that this factor comprised only 2 items and fewer items attenuate reliability). Table 1 shows descriptive and reliability statistics for these factors.

Science Achievement

Science achievement was assessed using an online test. It comprised 12 questions developed by the science department head of a large Sydney school. Following preliminary item development, language accessibility was assessed by the languages department head (at the same school). To accommodate the different year-levels of participating students, two forms were developed, one based on the Stage 4 (years 7 and 8) state science syllabus and the other based on the Stage 5 (years 9 and 10) state science syllabus. Questions were set within the contexts of content strands Earth and Space, Physical World, Chemical World, and Living World (NSW Science Syllabus; Nsw Education Standards Authority, 2019 ). Thus, the questions aligned with students’ skill level and what they had been taught—and considered a snapshot of their scientific literacy. The two forms were considered by five experienced science teachers who reviewed each test item in terms of: (a) alignment with the state science syllabus, (b) language and cultural accessibility of item text/graphics, and (c) the envisaged percentage of students likely to correctly answer an item (response options: 25, 50, or 75% of students). All answers were recoded as 0 = incorrect and 1 = correct. The number of correct responses was summed to a total score (as a continuous scale), reflecting something of a formative construct, not a latent construct. Scores were standardized by year level ( M = 0; SD = 1) so that students’ achievement scores were appropriately adjusted for different levels of science education and experience and for the fact two tests were administered (one test for years 7 and 8, raw M = 55 and 60%, respectively, one test for years 9 and 10, raw M = 52 and 57%, respectively). The science achievement factor was approximately normally distributed ( Table 1 ), with acceptable reliability at L1 and L2 (L1ω h = 0.69; L2ω h = 0.98).

Background Attributes

Numerous background attributes were used as covariates and also as potential moderators of boarding effects. Participants reported their boarding status (0 = day student; 1 = boarding student), prior achievement (relative year-group standing on science tests and assignments; 1 = “in the lower third of my year group,” 2 = “in the middle third of my year group,” 3 = “in the upper third of my year group”), age (a continuous measure), gender (0 = male, 1 = female), language background (0 = English speaking, 1 = non-English speaking), Indigenous status (0 = non-Indigenous; 1 = Indigenous), parents’ education (scale from 1 “No formal qualifications” to 6 “university undergraduate or higher degree”), and SES based on home postcode which was then matched to Australian Bureau of Statistics SES values (a continuous score, ranging from relatively greater socio-economic disadvantage to relatively greater socio-economic advantage, national M = 1000, SD = 100). As described in section “Data Analysis” below, in the boarding sample we also examined the association between years as a boarding student (a continuous variable) and academic outcomes.

Personality

We were also interested in the extent to which boarding status accounted for variance beyond existing personality traits (in line with recommendations by Martin et al., 2014 ). A brief personality scale ( Gosling et al., 2003 ) was administered, consisting in our study of a single item measure for each personality factor. Gosling et al. (2003) found adequate levels of validity and alignment between self and observer ratings. On a scale of 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree) students rated themselves on each of the “Big 5” personality traits, as follows: “I see myself as”… “sympathetic, warm” (agreeableness), “dependable, self-disciplined” (conscientiousness), “extraverted, enthusiastic” (extraversion), “anxious, easily upset” (neuroticism), “open to new experiences” (openness to experience).

Data Analysis

The analyses were conducted with M plus 7.31 ( Muthén and Muthén, 2015 ). Maximum likelihood with robustness to non-normality (MLR) was employed as the method of estimation ( Muthén and Muthén, 2015 ). Missing data (7.75% missing data points) were dealt with via the M plus full information maximum likelihood defaults (FIML; Muthén and Muthén, 2015 ). To account for the fact that students (L1) and classrooms (L2) are clustered within schools, we also adjusted standard errors for school using the “cluster” and “complex” commands in M plus (we did not conduct a 3-level multilevel model—students nested within classrooms within schools—because there was not a sufficient number of schools to justify this).

In the first instance, variance components analyses were conducted to determine between-class variation in boarding status, and science motivation, engagement, and achievement. Intraclass correlations (ICCs) were of interest here, identifying the percentage of between-class variance for each measure (reported in Table 1 ). Then, multilevel correlation analyses were conducted, where, in a single model, student-level (L1) associations among all variables (domain-general and -specific) were examined, as were all relevant class-level (L2) associations (domain-specific only).

Following this, analyses centered on multilevel path analysis. This proceeded through three stages. For Step 1 at L1, student boarding status was entered as a predictor of student-level science motivation, engagement, and achievement and also student-level domain-general motivation and engagement. For Step 1 at L2, class-level boarding status predicted class-level science motivation, engagement, and achievement. For Step 2 at L1, student boarding status, background attributes, and personality factors were entered as predictors of student-level science motivation, engagement, and achievement and also student-level domain-general motivation and engagement. Step 2 at L2 was the same as Step 1 at L2. Step 3 at L1 added to Step 2 by also assessing the extent to which student-level background and personality attributes moderated the effects of student-level boarding status—by way of interaction terms (e.g., boarding × age, etc.; calculated by zero-centering the main effects and finding their product; Aiken et al., 1991 ). Step 3 at L2 (classroom-level) was the same as L2 in Steps 1 and 2. Boarding status was modeled using the doubly latent format in M plus , with L2 effects disentangled from L1 effects; however, for completeness, in Table 3 notes we present findings for a model in which boarding status was modeled as a raw score at L1 and a cluster (class) aggregate at L2—the same pattern of findings was derived. Figure 1 presents the complete model at Step 3.

Table 3A. Multilevel path model: Step 1 (boarding as predictor) and Step 2 (boarding, background attributes, and personality as predictors).

Table 3B. Multilevel path model: Step 3—Boarding, background attributes, personality, and interactions predicting motivation, engagement, and achievement.

In a supplementary analysis among boarding students only, we also investigated the association between years in boarding school and academic outcomes. At L1, years in boarding (alongside background attributes, and personality factors) was entered as a predictor of student-level science motivation, engagement, and achievement and also student-level domain-general motivation and engagement. At L2, class-level years boarding (i.e., average years boarding in a class) predicted class-level science motivation, engagement, and achievement.

In our study, the sample is large and there is a risk that effects are disproportionately biased toward statistical significance. Thus, to avoid giving undue weight to effect sizes that are statistically significant but small (given the large sample size), we applied Keith’s (2006) guidelines and a more stringent p -value ( p < 0.001) to help us determine if a finding was interpretable. As per Keith (2006) , effect sizes (β) of 0.05 and above are considered small, β of 0.10 and above are moderate, and β of 0.25 and above are large. Accordingly, effects that are significant at p < 0.001 and β ≥ 0.05 are taken as interpretable.

Descriptive Statistics, Classroom Variation, and Multilevel Correlations

Table 1 presents means, standard deviations, skewness, kurtosis, and reliability (coefficient omega) for all substantive measures (motivation, engagement, achievement) in the study. Socio-demographic descriptive statistics were presented in Participants, above. The distributional properties demonstrated that the measures were approximately normally distributed, with standard deviations appropriately proportional to means, and skewness and kurtosis values within acceptable ranges ( Kline, 2011 ). Omega coefficients ranged between 0.61 and 0.84 at student-level (L1) and between 0.87 and 0.98 at classroom-level (L2), suggesting generally acceptable reliability ( McNeish, 2018 ).

Variance components analyses identified the between-class variation (i.e., difference between science classrooms) in boarding status, science motivation, science engagement, and science achievement. Findings are shown in Table 1 which presents intraclass correlations (ICCs) and indicate the percentage variance for these variables from class-to-class (i.e., the percentage of how much variation there is between science classrooms, relative to residual and student-to-student variation). ICCs for the study’s L2 variables were: boarding status = 0.15 (15%), positive science motivation = 0.14 (14%), positive science engagement = 0.09 (9%), negative science motivation = 0.08 (8%), negative science engagement = 0.14 (14%), and science achievement = 0.31 (31%). There is thus notable variation between classrooms on each of the L2 factors—and with more than 10% of the variance on most factors explained at Level 2, multilevel modeling was justified ( Byrne, 2012 ).

We proceeded to test multilevel correlations underlying the hypothesized multilevel path model. This generates bivariate correlations that are the first insight into the relationships tested in Figure 1 . Correlations are presented in Table 2 . Here we summarize only significant correlations with L1 and L2 boarding factors (all non-significant correlations and all correlations among background attributes, personality, and outcomes are in Table 2 ). For L1 we examine the association between students’ boarding status and their motivation, engagement, and achievement; with positive (or negative) correlations indicating boarders scoring higher (or lower) on motivation, engagement, and/or achievement. For L2 we examine the association between the proportion of boarding students in a classroom and class-average motivation, engagement, and achievement; with positive (or negative) correlations indicating classrooms with a higher (or lower) proportion of boarders scoring higher (or lower) on class-average motivation, engagement, and/or achievement. As noted in Data Analysis, given the number of participants and the many parameters tested, we here focus on effects attaining p < 0.001. At the student-level (L1), boarding status was significantly and positively correlated with age ( r = 0.14, p < 0.001; boarders older), SES ( r = −0.59, p < 0.001; boarders lower), parent education ( r = −0.12, p < 0.001; boarders lower), prior achievement ( r = −0.14, p < 0.001; boarders lower), agreeableness ( r = −0.05, p < 0.001; boarders lower), and science achievement ( r = −0.10, p < 0.001; boarders lower). At L2 (classroom-level), boarding status was not significantly correlated with any outcome factors.

Multilevel Path Analyses

Step 1 main effects.

In Step 1 at student-level (L1), boarding status was the sole predictor of domain-general motivation and engagement and science motivation, engagement, and achievement. At classroom-level (L2), boarding status (proportion of boarders in a classroom) was the predictor of class-average science motivation, engagement, and achievement. In all cases, positive (or negative) standardized beta values indicate that boarding is associated with higher (or lower) scores on academic outcomes. Multilevel path analysis showed that student-level (L1) boarding status predicted science achievement (β = −0.07, p < 0.001; boarders lower) and negative science engagement (β = 0.05, p < 0.01; boarders higher). However, only the effect for science achievement attained the dual criteria for interpretability [β ≥ 0.05 (as per Keith, 2006 ) and p < 0.001—see section “Data Analysis” above]. For Step 1 at the class-level (L2), boarding status did not significantly predict any L2 science motivation, engagement, or achievement factors. Thus, the number of boarding students in the class (relative to day students) was not differentially associated with academic motivation, engagement, and achievement. In keeping with these generally non-significant boarding effects, the variance explained ( R 2 ) in Step 1 is also low. All Step 1 findings (significant and non-significant) are presented in Table 3A .

Step 2 Main Effects

In Step 2 at student-level (L1), boarding status, background attributes, and personality were predictors of domain-general motivation and engagement and science motivation, engagement, and achievement. At classroom-level (L2), boarding status (proportion of boarders in a classroom) was the predictor of class-average science motivation, engagement, and achievement. In all cases, positive (or negative) standardized beta values indicate that boarding is associated with higher (or lower) scores on academic outcomes. All (significant and non-significant) findings are presented in Table 3A . Here we focus on boarding effects; effects for all other predictors are shown in Table 3A . These analyses showed that student-level (L1) boarding status predicted positive domain-general motivation (β = 0.05, p < 0.01; boarders higher), positive domain-general engagement (β = 0.06, p < 0.001; boarders higher), and negative science engagement (β = 0.03, p < 0.01; boarders higher). However, only the effect for positive domain-general engagement attained the dual criteria for interpretability; and, the interpretable Step 1 effect for achievement dropped out. Class-level (L2) boarding status did not significantly predict any L2 science motivation, engagement, or achievement factors. Thus, the proportion of boarding students in the class was not significantly associated with class-average academic motivation, engagement, and achievement.

Inclusion of Step 2 background and personality attributes yielded a significant increase (at p < 0.001) in explained variance for L1. Thus, at L1 for domain-general outcomes, beyond the role of boarding status these student attributes explained significant variance in positive motivation ( R 2 = 0.37), negative motivation ( R 2 = 0.30), positive engagement ( R 2 = 0.37), and negative engagement ( R 2 = 0.22). At L1 for science outcomes, beyond the role of boarding status the student attributes explained significant variance in positive motivation ( R 2 = 0.26), negative motivation ( R 2 = 0.25), positive engagement ( R 2 = 0.28), negative engagement ( R 2 = 0.25), and achievement ( R 2 = 0.20).

Step 3 Main and Interaction Effects

In Step 3 at student-level (L1), boarding status, background attributes, personality (as main effects) and the cross-products of boarding × background/personality attributes (interaction effects; e.g., boarding × age, etc.) were predictors of domain-general motivation and engagement and science motivation, engagement, and achievement. At classroom-level (L2), boarding status (proportion of boarders in a classroom) was the predictor of class-average science motivation, engagement, and achievement. In all main effects, positive (or negative) standardized beta values indicate that boarding is associated with higher (or lower) scores on academic outcomes. Interaction effects are unpacked as appropriate and described below. All (significant and non-significant) findings are presented in Table 3B .

For Step 3 main effects , multilevel path analysis showed that student-level (L1) boarding status predicted positive domain-general motivation (β = 0.05, p < 0.01; boarders higher), domain-general positive engagement (β = 0.08, p < 0.001; boarders higher), and negative domain-general engagement (β = −0.09, p < 0.01; boarders lower). However, only the effect for positive domain-general engagement attained the dual criteria for interpretability. Class-level (L2) boarding status did not significantly predict any L2 science motivation, engagement, or achievement factors. In this final model, other L1 main effects attaining the dual criteria for interpretability were age, prior achievement, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness (see Table 3B for strength and direction of standardized beta coefficients).

For Step 3 interaction effects , three effects attained Keith’s (2006) benchmark (β ≥ 0.05) and significance at p < 0.001. The first was boarding × conscientiousness for negative domain-general engagement (β = 0.10, p < 0.001). In follow-up simple effects tests, we found that for students low in conscientiousness there was a larger effect of boarding status on negative domain-general engagement (β = −0.09) than for students high in conscientiousness (β = −0.01). The second was boarding × gender for science achievement (β = −0.06, p < 0.001). For females, there was a larger effect of boarding status on science achievement (β = −0.18) than for boys (β = −0.04). The third was boarding × SES for negative science engagement (β = -0.07, p < 0.001). For low SES students, there was a larger effect of boarding status on negative science engagement (β = 0.04) than for high SES students (β < 0.01).

Supplementary Analyses: Years as a Boarding Student

In a supplementary analysis among boarding students only, we also investigated the association between years as a boarding student and academic outcomes. Controlling for background attributes and personality factors at L1, we found that years as a boarding student positively predicted science test achievement (β = 0.08, p < 0.01; more time in boarding associated with higher achievement); however, this effect did not attain our dual criteria for interpretability (β ≥ 0.05 and p < 0.001). Class-level (L2) years in boarding did not significantly predict any L2 science motivation, engagement, or achievement factors. Taken together, then, time spent in boarding was not a salient factor in students’ academic outcomes.

After controlling for background and personality attributes, we found predominant parity between boarding and day students in their motivation, engagement, and achievement. We also found that motivation, engagement, and achievement at the class-level were not significantly affected by the number of boarders in the classroom. In addition, the effects of boarding were generally not moderated by students’ background or personality attributes. Thus, we conclude that boarders have academic opportunities and outcomes that are comparable to day students.

Student-Level and Classroom-Level Effects: Boarding vs. Day Status

Schools comprising boarding and day students represent a unique research design. In our study, many students constituted what we might consider a “treatment” group (boarding students) and many others constituted a “comparison” group (day students). The two groups were educated in the same classrooms and received the same syllabus and instruction from the same teachers. In fact, the clustering of students in the same classrooms enabled us to extend prior research by investigating the extent to which the number of boarders in a (science) classroom had an impact on class-average motivation, engagement, and achievement outcomes (in science).

Prior multivariate research into boarding effects had only considered domain-general motivation and engagement ( Martin et al., 2014 ), and found predominant parity between boarding and day students on these outcome factors. However, that earlier research had been conducted at the individual student level, looking at an individual’s boarding (or day) status and its relationship with an individual’s motivation and engagement; it did not take into account the possibility that a critical mass of boarding students in a classroom may affect class-level outcomes. It is known that individuals can affect the group to which they belong and in turn the group can affect these individuals ( Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002 ; Goldstein, 2003 ; Marsh et al., 2008 ). This raises the question: given that boarding status represents a unique educational experience (see section “Introduction”), does that experience converge in a classroom where other boarders are present to affect overall class-average outcomes? Because we collected data on science motivation, engagement, and achievement in science classrooms, we were able answer this question. Our findings showed that the proportion of boarders in the classroom (relative to day students) was not significantly associated with class-average science outcomes.

The study’s multilevel design was important to help better ascertain the nature of boarding effects. With this design we could disentangle student-level (Level 1) variance from class-level (Level 2) variance. In doing so it was evident that boarding status was not associated with science outcomes at either level ( Table 3B ). Given this, it was interesting to note that there were boarding effects for domain-general motivation and engagement (boarders higher in positive domain-general motivation and engagement and lower in domain-general negative engagement)—though only one (for domain-general positive engagement) attained our dual criteria of interpretability (β ≥ 0.05 and p < 0.001). In our study, positive engagement comprised task management, planning and monitoring, and persistence factors. These are behavioral dimensions that may be quite responsive to the structured nature of study conditions in boarding contexts ( Lee and Barth, 2009 ). In these contexts, there are typically well-organized and well-planned study times and routines that students work to. These activities are also overseen and supported by teachers or other boarding house staff. Over time and relative to day students, these factors may have the effect of promoting a general disposition to better task management, persistence, etc. (i.e., positive domain-general engagement). Moreover, over time, boarding students may come to internalize these behaviors as their own capacities, further contributing to higher self-reported domain-general positive engagement. Interestingly, this was not the case for the domain-specific counterpart (positive science engagement) and this may be because there are key aspects of science engagement that are class-specific and applicable to both day and boarding students (e.g., science practicums, experiments, predicting, observing, etc.) and not linked to boarding study regimes.

Background and Personality Attributes

Findings in this study were also notable because they represented effects after controlling for background and personality attributes. As shown in correlations in Table 2 , there were significant bivariate associations among background attributes, boarding status, and academic outcomes—suggesting a need in our multivariate modeling to account for variance attributable to background attributes when assessing the unique relationship between boarding status and academic outcomes. In fact, Martin et al. (2014) emphasized the need for this and so our findings continue to underscore the fact that boarding effects cannot be fully interpreted without considering students’ background and personality attributes. Future research investigating boarding effects might thus consider these as particularly important to include and control for. Taken together, findings suggest that researchers ought not confuse or conflate boarding effects with effects due to some key background and personality attributes of boarding students. Relatedly, researchers ought to avoid raw comparisons of boarding and day students. Without adjusting for relevant background and personality attributes, raw comparisons may lead to biased results.

It has also been suggested that there may be some students for whom boarding may offer particular benefit. For example, it may provide Indigenous, rural, or remote students with educational opportunities not available to them in their distant residential communities. Or, being an inherently social residential context, perhaps boarding is better suited to students high in extraversion. We were able to test these possibilities through interaction effects (e.g., boarding × Indigenous status; boarding × extraversion, etc.; Table 3 ). Our findings suggested that for the most part boarding effects were not moderated by students’ background and personality attributes. Of the 108 possible interaction effects, only three attained our benchmark for interpretability (β ≥ 0.05 and p < 0.001): boarding × conscientiousness, boarding × gender, and boarding × SES. Taking our main and interaction effects together, then, it appears that including background and personality factors as main covariate effects is important when understanding boarding status, but it may not be necessary to model these background and personality factors as moderators of boarding status. Future research may seek to confirm this.

Practice Implications

We suggest that in the context of commentary and research documenting adversity for students in boarding schools, our finding of educational parity between boarding and day students is notable and has implications for educators and parents. For parents, one of their main concerns is that their child has educational opportunities and access on par with other students in a school. Indeed Lawrence (2005) identified that parents choose to board their child for various opportunities (e.g., extracurricular activity) and a structured and stable learning environment. Our findings suggest they receive such support—at least, to the extent that they evince academic outcomes comparable with day students. Many parents also send their child to board because, for one reason or another, their child does not have optimal educational access (e.g., due to geographic distance, etc.). We found that boarders’ results on motivation, engagement, and achievement were comparable to that of day students and we infer that this reflects equal opportunity and access for boarding students.

It was also interesting to note that the proportion of boarders in a classroom did not seem to be associated with class-average motivation, engagement, and achievement. There were no significant differences in these academic outcomes as a function of whether there were fewer or more boarders in the class. Schools often wrestle with classroom composition and how to collect students together to optimize academic and other outcomes. There has been a small body of research investigating classroom composition, finding some evidence that there are differences in motivation and engagement between classes taught by the same teacher ( Marsh et al., 2008 ). Our study adds to this work and would suggest that schools need not factor in the ratio of boarders to day students when deciding on class composition.

On the issue of access and opportunity, the general lack of moderation effects suggested no differences in academic outcomes between subgroups of boarders (and day students). For example, as we explained in the introduction, there have been questions about whether cultural identity may be unduly affected by the boarding experience or whether gender may play out in problematic ways in boarding contexts. In our study, there appeared to be no problematic patterns of interaction effects that would suggest issues along these lines: the general parity in academic outcomes between boarding and day students was found irrespective of a student’s background and personality attributes. From a practice perspective, the general lack of moderation effects suggests that efforts aimed at promoting motivation, engagement, and achievement among boarders need not be differentially directed at different sub-groups within the boarding community. Put another way, whether a student is a boarder or not, educational support to compensate low SES status or low prior achievement is required. Nevertheless, we did not assess some other potentially influential background attributes such as learning difficulties, which may require particular attention for some boarders (but conceivably not any more or less than among day students with learning difficulties, which would again suggest no interaction effect).

Importantly, however, although our study found predominant parity between boarders and day students and no interaction effects of note, there is no question that the transition from one’s community (and day school) to boarding school is a major one ( Martin et al., 2014 ). This being the case, it is prudent to consider educational support that can assist boarders in this transition and then through school. It is noteworthy that recent research in the Australian context (with particular focus on Indigenous students) has conducted quite a substantial body of work identifying supports that may be helpful. For example, research has shown that multidimensional intervention can be effectively administered to promote the resilience of Indigenous boarding students ( Benveniste et al., 2020 ). Likewise, a study of a social-emotional wellbeing program found that Indigenous boarders experienced an enhanced capacity to seek and provide help, work in groups, manage conflict, and discuss cultural issues ( Franck et al., 2020 ; see also Heyeres et al., 2018 ; Rutherford et al., 2019 ). Practices within the boarding school can also provide further opportunities to assist boarders’ academic and social-emotional wellbeing. For example, it has been shown that boarding staff can harness positive relationships with students to enhance students’ educational participation, mental health, and self-responsibility ( McCalman et al., 2020 ). Qualitative data from Indigenous boarding students and staff have also identified how boarding schools can be physically designed to optimize a sense of belonging. These include flexible spaces to foster relationships inside the boarding house, student voice in how spaces are designed and arranged, and spaces that provide “cultural relief” ( Whettingsteel et al., 2020 ). There are also culturally based strategies that can support boarding outcomes. For example, Lloyd and Duggie Pwerl (2020) showed how Indigenous students can achieve Western educational success in a boarding context through efforts by the school to maintain key aspects of their culture (also see Bobongie, 2017 ). Relatedly, Osborne et al. (2019) discuss this idea in terms of “both ways” capital where educators seek to affirm and strengthen Indigenous identity and help them develop positive Western academic codes.

Limitations, Future Directions, and Conclusions

There are limitations in our study important to consider when interpreting findings and which offer some direction for future research. First, we speculated that the boarding context comprises routines, structures, and interactions with educational support staff that are unique to that context—and that this may yield particular educational effects relative to day students. However, we did not have data on these factors in this study. We also did not have data on where boarders were from, including cohorts within the boarding sub-sample (such as Indigenous students). We therefore do not know if boarders from different areas evince different motivation, engagement, and achievement patterns and we cannot as fully contextualize the findings derived in this study. In future, collecting such data and ascertaining their impacts will identify more distinct effects particular to the boarding context and to whom these effects apply. Second, our study focused on high school students, not younger students in elementary school settings. Theories of attachment (e.g., Ainsworth and Bowlby, 1991 ) have emphasized the influential role of parents in children’s lives and it is possible that boarding reduces these important influences and may stunt personal development for younger students (also see Jack, 2020 ). It is thus important to test the generalizability of our findings to students in a range of other educational and residential contexts.

Third, given our cross-sectional data, there are questions about factor and causal ordering which may be answered by collecting data that monitors students who move from day status to boarding status and vice versa, as well as collecting data over time (i.e., longitudinal). This would provide a unique perspective on what changes (if any) occur as a result of changing status from one to the other. Relatedly, future research might look to include social-emotional wellbeing indicators as background attributes to disentangle the role of boarding status on academic outcomes from prior social-emotional wellbeing. These could include measures such as the Flourishing Scale ( Diener et al., 2009 ) and Kessler Psychological Distress Scale ( Kessler and Mroczek, 1994 ). Although our study did control for trait-like personality (including neuroticism as a mental health indicator), it is important to also control for more specific social-emotional wellbeing state-like measures. Indeed, the importance of considering a diversity of key factors and issues of modeling and causal ordering are increasingly being recognized by boarding school researchers (e.g., Guenther et al., 2020 ). Fourth, there is a need for more intensive real-time data. Recent research using mobile technology to capture real-time motivation and engagement has revealed in-the-moment variance in motivation and engagement ( Martin et al., 2015 , 2019b ) and it would be fascinating to explore motivation and engagement while students are doing study and homework in the boarding house. It is also important to recognize measurement issues for some groups of students in the boarding sector. For example, Langham et al. (2018) identified some challenges validating previously established tools measuring resilience among Indigenous boarders. It is therefore encouraging that the motivation and engagement measurement tool used in this study has been validated among Indigenous students ( Martin et al., 2019a ) and has previously been effective in assessing boarding effects among Indigenous students ( Martin et al., 2014 ). Fifth, despite modernization of the boarding sector ( Anderson, 2005 ), there are students for whom it is a negative experience. Future research might conduct person-centered analyses (e.g., latent profile analysis) to explore potential subgroups of boarders for whom it is a negative experience and examine the reasons why and the impact of this negative experience on their academic outcomes.

Sixth, as noted in Methods, the majority of students in this study were boys. Because of this, we conducted numerous additional statistical analyses leading us to tentatively conclude that gender composition did not disproportionately or unreasonably impact factors and empirical associations in this study. It is also the case that the sample was generally higher in SES than the national average; also, there were markedly more day students than boarding students. In some ways these imbalances are unavoidable in the Australian context as boarding schools tend to be higher SES independent schools and the ratio of boarding-to-day students is somewhat disproportionate given that most Australian boarding schools are in major urban areas or regional centers and enroll many “local” day students. We also point out that the average level of SES for our boarders was around the national average (see section “Methods”). Nevertheless, our investigation of interaction effects was important here because it allowed us to ascertain boarding and day status effects as a function of low and high SES. Another important feature of analyses was our modeling of SES as a covariate in analyses to control for variation attributable to it when seeking to identify unique boarding effects (beyond, for example, their lower SES relative to day students). This yielded a finding of predominant parity between boarding and day students. Thus, in the context of a history of negative effects of boarding on young people’s development ( Duffell, 2000 ), our finding of predominant parity is significant. This notwithstanding, future research should recruit more balanced samples to be further assured of the generalizability of the present results, as well as to look at potential gender differences. Finally, we did not have enough schools to model at the school-level; we could only do so at the student-level (for domain-general and domain-specific outcomes) and class-level (for domain-specific outcomes). We note prior research found variation between schools in their capacity to support boarders ( McCalman et al., 2020 ). Future research might recruit a sufficient number of schools to explore any variation in outcomes at the school-level. In all these ways we can better understand and assist boarding students as they navigate through their residential educational experience.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because: Part of an industry research partnership; consent from participants to share dataset not available; summative data (e.g., correlation matrix with standard deviations) available to enable analyses. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to AM, [email protected] .

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the UNSW Human Ethics Committee. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

AM led research design, led data analysis, and led report writing. EB and RK assisted with research design, assisted with interpretation of findings, and assisted with report writing. JP assisted with research design and assisted with report writing. VM-S assisted with report writing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This study was funded by the Australian Research Council (Grant #LP170100253) and the Future Project at The King’s School.

Conflict of Interest

It is appropriate to note that one of the measures (the MES) in the study is a published instrument developed by this study’s first author attracting a small fee and royalty, part of which is put toward its ongoing development and administration and part of which is also donated to UNICEF. However, for this study, there was no fee involved for its use.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

^ Boarding students are situated in residential contexts, often called boarding houses, boarding dormitories, or boarding residences (referred to henceforth as boarding houses). Boarding schools comprise one or several boarding houses. The ratio of boarding-to-day students in a school varies. Some schools are mainly day schools, with relatively few boarding students; other schools have a larger boarding contingent.

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Osborne, S., Rigney, L.-I., Benveniste, T., Guenther, J., and Disbray, S. (2019). Mapping boarding school opportunities for Aboriginal students from the Central Land Council region of Northern Territory. Aus. J. Indigen. Educ. 48, 162–178. doi: 10.1017/jie.2018.1

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Keywords : boarding, residential, motivation, engagement, achievement, science

Citation: Martin AJ, Burns EC, Kennett R, Pearson J and Munro-Smith V (2021) Boarding and Day School Students: A Large-Scale Multilevel Investigation of Academic Outcomes Among Students and Classrooms. Front. Psychol. 11:608949. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.608949

Received: 22 September 2020; Accepted: 02 December 2020; Published: 05 January 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Martin, Burns, Kennett, Pearson and Munro-Smith. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Andrew J. Martin, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Four Reasons Why You Should Consider a Boarding School

You might have heard the biggest misconception students and parents tend to have about boarding schools: by attending one, you “miss out” on school in the traditional sense. In reality, students who attend boarding schools have just as many — if not more — opportunities to form meaningful relationships inside and outside of the classroom. There are still proms and homecomings, and there’s an abundance of extracurricular activities to choose from. Athletics, arts, and community service are a crucial part of student life. At a boarding school, students have the wider world at their fingertips.

According to Forbes , “boarding schools are twenty-four hour, intentional communities created with the student’s growth and development at the center.” The atmosphere is invigorating and immersive, and students come to call a globally diverse community home. Here are a few reasons why you might want to consider a boarding school, even if you’ve never considered the option before.

Reason #1: Academics

At the heart of every boarding school is a rigorous academic program. By nature, boarding schools allow for expanded or enhanced curriculums compared to public schools. And because class sizes are typically smaller, teachers are able to provide more individualized attention. This combination translates into a high caliber classroom experience that is difficult for traditional schools to match.

According to Study International , studies reveal that 78% of boarding school students feel they were prepared for college versus only 28% of public school students. An overwhelming majority of students who choose boarding schools leave feeling well equipped for the next step in their educational journey.

Reason #2: Beyond a Bachelor’s Degree

From the day they step foot on campus, boarding school students are encouraged and trained to meet high educational standards. But the benefits aren’t strictly academic: students are also prepared for influential roles in society. Character and leadership are integral to a boarding school’s atmosphere, education, and programs. Many of tomorrow’s leaders are not born, but made in boarding schools.

Students also develop crucial skills like time management and independence earlier than they might have without an on-campus environment. “Our school day mimics a college schedule where students will take either two or three classes per day,” explains Kelli Hinton, IMG Academy College Counselor & NCAA Initial Eligibility Specialist. “Students learn responsibility at an early age and are exposed to various cultures from our diverse international community. Our school environment allows students develop skills they will take with them in the next stages of higher education.”

Reason #3: College Planning

There are more factors than academic preparedness that go into a student’s success in college. To further prepare students for the next level of their academic journey, boarding schools offer advanced college preparatory departments that not only advise on academics, but also extracurricular activities and other opportunities students can take advantage of outside of the classroom. With a tight-knit web of residential mentors, coaches, teachers, and administrators, boarding school students have a strong support system to help them succeed and grow as they pursue a higher education.

Reason #4: Athletics & Extracurriculars

Clubs and advanced athletic programs are a major draw for boarding schools. In addition to providing regular physical activity, athletic programs provide multiple benefits that will serve students well into college and adulthood. Student-athletes at boarding schools are driven and disciplined, traits that carry over into the classroom. And a recent study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that sports participation results in significant mental and physical health benefits in adolescents. Even for students who do not want to play sports on a professional level, athletics are a vital and stimulating part of the boarding school experience.

In Conclusion

Boarding schools prepare students for future success all while offering the pleasures of traditional student life. Furthermore, students at boarding schools receive a jump start when it comes to college life and adulthood. The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) conducted a study that showed 78% of boarding school grads felt well prepared for the non-academic aspects of college life, such as independence, social life, and time management, compared to 36% of private day and 23% of public school students. Contrary to what many people believe, students at boarding school are not “missing out” — they are getting ahead.

Author: IMG Academy

IMG Academy's college preparatory environment provides a setting for 6-12th graders and post-graduates to maximize their potential and reach the next level through developmental opportunities as students, athletes, and as the leaders and champions of tomorrow. IMG focuses on academic excellence, elite athletics, social responsibility, and character development. Learn more at www.imgacademy.com.

11 advantages of attending a boarding school

The decision to attend a boarding school can be life-changing. Even parents convinced of the advantages sometimes harbour doubts whether this step is right for their kids. Stereotypes about boarding schools often support their concerns.

In the article below, Swiss international boarding school Institut Montana cuts through the stereotypes. How does it look in real life? What are the benefits of attending a modern boarding school?

Learning independence

Starting a new life at boarding school is a huge adventure, but the change in lifestyle can be daunting.

Experienced boarding staff understand this. They know how much care to give at first and how gradually to help children take more responsibility. As days go by, boarding students become increasingly independent. They learn to fit into the rhythm of school life, to manage a timetable full of classes, meals and after-school activities. They also learn to keep their rooms tidy, to organise themselves for weekly laundry, and to make good use of their free time.

When it is time to leave for college, former boarding students arrive prepared. They have learnt how to be responsible, organised, they are full of initiative. They are ready to make the best of themselves.

Growing and learning together

When a community of friends lives and learns together, they absorb the advantages of peer learning. This is often hugely motivating. Boarding students can do their homework together and challenge each other academically, extending the depth of their learning and enriching their grasp of the subject matter. Of course, learning with your friends can be a lot more fun than doing homework by yourself at home.

Boarding schools often offer designated study time for students to do their homework. This study time is supervised by teachers who are available to help with questions. Later, houseparents are also available to support students; they have plenty of experience in helping students reach their goals.

Making lifelong friends

Ask anyone what they like most about being a boarding student, and the answer is likely to be – my friends! Boarding students eat together, live together, and celebrate successes together. They create fond memories of evenings and weekends in each other’s company. Even trying times can turn into positive memories when you have your friends close by. Strong support systems come from sharing the formative experiences of these young adult lives.

As we can see with our alumni, the bonds of friendship formed in boarding school last a lifetime, long after school years are over.

Structured life

An important part of growing up is learning how to structure your time.

Not all children learn self-regulation at the same pace, and boarding school life is organized to help each individual learn according to their needs. The day has a structure, with regulated wake-up times, sleeping and eating times. This has to fit into the academic timetable, with its slots for lessons, homework, activities and leisure time. Weekends have their own pattern of mealtimes and scheduled activities but with more flexibility. This helps students learn to exercise their judgement about finding a good balance. At the same time, each student is supported in their progress at developing the techniques to organize themselves well.

With the minimum of stress, and with careful attention to the healthy development of each child, these crucial skills become part of the repertoire of these growing young people.

Another aspect of a structured life is a balanced school calendar. Students at Institut Montana have longer Christmas, Easter and summer holidays, which allows them to spend quality time with their families.

Extracurricular activities

The word “boring” does not belong to the lexicon of boarding students. Their free time is filled with options that promote their physical and their mental health as well as providing lots of fun. Facilities for sports, partners to play chess, workshops for becoming an expert in robotics, options to explore cooking from around the world, a library and an art room, are right there to learn from.

These extracurricular activities help students stay active. They also discover hobbies and passions and grow into accomplished adults whose lives are rich.

Fun weekend and overnight holiday trips

Boarding life at weekends often means fun trips with your friends. In the heart of Switzerland, opportunities are endless. It could be cultural, visiting historic cities and famous art galleries; adventurous: karting, water sliding in canyons or rock climbing with a certified instructor. Holidays or long weekends might take students on overnight trips to explore other parts of this beautiful country and, of course, to go skiing in winter.

Life around nature

Many boarding schools, like Institut Montana Zugerberg, are in beautiful locations. They are surrounded by nature and secluded from the noise and pollution of big cities. For students it means lots of fresh air and outdoor activities on their doorstep: hiking, mountain biking, sledging, cross country skiing, the list goes on.

Balanced and healthy nutrition

Boarding students have all their meals at school, so it is essential that the food is carefully planned. The kitchen is a central part of any boarding school, with a chef who knows how to source ingredients that are local and fresh to ensure that these growing young people get the nutrients they need. Boarding school students have no time for unhealthy snacking. Instead, they are provided with healthy options in their breaks. At Institut Montana, bowls of fresh fruit are always available.

Wonderful houseparents: 24-hour supervision and care

Houseparents play a huge role in a boarding student’s life. They are counsellors, mediators, comforters and guides. They supervise students in their daily lives, overseeing their general well-being and supporting them as they learn how to structure and balance their days.

As they get older, children need a few more freedoms to learn self-responsibility. Boarding schools allow some exploration and independence while keeping those young people safe. At Institut Montana , for example, older students have the privilege to venture into the nearby city of Zug, with permission from parents, and subject to their record of behaviour. Of course, their houseparents know where they go, and students must be back punctually at the stated time.

Exposure to an incredible number of nationalities

In the modern globalized world, it is very beneficial to be exposed to various languages and nationalities. Boarding schools, especially Swiss boarding schools, are known to have diverse international communities.

Boarding students learn to embrace and appreciate the cultural differences, live together harmoniously and discover the diversity of our world through their daily conversations with fellow boarding students from other countries.

Network for life

Bonds formed among boarding school students are very strong and last for life. At Institut Montana , we cherish the strong sense of community shared by our former students and staff. We are a global family of passionate individuals who share a deep enthusiasm for education, a love of learning and affection for each other.

Our alumni look back on their school years with fond memories and laughter. Many of them take time to mentor current students. They come back on campus to deliver high-end workshops and love to give back to our community this way. Our alumni network is spread around the world, making it easy for our former students to find trust and support from a fellow boarding school friend in almost every corner of the world.

Attending a boarding school offers many advantages, teaching young adults important skills so that they grow with confidence, resilience and independence towards adulthood.

Institut Montana has almost 100 years of experience as a boarding school, but it continues to look forward. We make careful use of understanding of child development to provide the best experience for our students. They will build strong bonds of friendship and receive thorough preparation for their future lives.

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29 Major Pros & Cons Of Boarding Schools

“ Having your adolescence at an all-male boarding school is just crap.”

Benedict Crumberbatch, Actor

Advantages & Disadvantages of Boarding Schools

advantages and disadvantages of boarding schools

Boarding school is a certain type of school where the kids actually live on the school premise, in contrast to day school where kids come back home every day.

Boarding school has a long tradition in some countries.

However, over the past decades, it lost part of its popularity.

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Even though boarding school has some advantages, there are also serious downsides related to it.

In this article, the pros and cons of boarding school are examined.

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Advantages of boarding schools, unique education possibilities, community feeling, friends for a lifetime, future business connections, students may actually feel at home in school, increases sense of responsibility of children, contributes to the independence of pupils, fosters discipline, decision-making is encouraged, may prevent kids to do stupid things, students may be more eager to learn, boarding school traditions, students from all over the world, personal development programs, innovative teaching techniques, students can have a mentor.

One major advantage of boarding schools is that they provide their students with high-quality and also with unique education possibilities.

Boarding schools often have quite high standards and teachers are often experts in their field.

Thus, pupils will be able to get a quite good education, which may give them pretty good career opportunities afterward.

Moreover, they may also be able to join courses that would usually not be offered in conventional schools.

Hence, students may be able to broaden their knowledge through the attendance of boarding schools.

Since children spend all day and night in boarding schools, they also develop a strong feeling of community.

Some children will build pretty strong connections to their roommates and their teachers.

This strong connection to the institution may increase the students’ motivation and their learning behavior since they will actually enjoy their stay in boarding school.

Boarding schools are also known to form quite strong bonds among students.

Many children find friends for a lifetime in boarding school and they will stay in contact with each other also when they finally leave boarding school.

Really good friendships are rare and therefore, this can be seen as another important advantage boarding schools can offer to their students.

Boarding schools do not only promote friendships, they are also known to provide their students with excellent networking opportunities.

Since many kids in boarding schools come from wealthy families and will have pretty decent jobs afterward, chances are that those connections children make early on in their lives will lead to a strong business network once they grow up.

This may give these children pretty good job opportunities and a strong network for the rest of their lives.

Some children also enjoy their stay in boarding school more compared to staying with their parents.

Thus, some children might actually feel like boarding school is their home.

Especially those students will have a great motivation to study hard since they will really identify with their school, which may lead to better grades and better job opportunities afterwards.

Children who attend boarding school may also be more responsible compared to children who attend conventional schools at the same age.

This is true to the fact that children in boarding schools have a quite strict curriculum and are expected to learn and study hard in order to sustain the good reputation of the institution.

Thus, children in boarding schools are often told how important it is to study hard and those children will develop a strong sense of responsibility to comply with the rules due to that.

Since children in boarding schools will not have their parents around who will do the laundry and also organize their daily life, they have to grow up faster and will become more independent in a shorter period of time compared to children who attend day school.

A high level of independence is quite an important characteristic which helps in all parts of daily life.

Thus, children who attend boarding school may develop this important characteristic faster and may be able to succeed in life better on average.

Discipline is another trait that is taught to students in boarding school.

Teachers in boarding schools often pay close attention to the behavior of their students and a lack of discipline is often punished in a certain way.

Therefore, children will learn a high level of discipline at a quite early stage, which may also benefit them their whole life since discipline is a key feature for success.

Children in boarding schools are also often encouraged to make their own decisions from a quite young age.

Since decisions determine how our future life will look like, it is quite important to give those kids the opportunity to make those decisions so that they are also prepared to make difficult decisions once they turn into grownups later.

While many teenagers consume plenty of alcohol and drugs, children in boarding schools are often quite restricted in this regard and supervisors take great care to assure that there are no such substances inside their institution.

Hence, while other kids may develop alcohol or drug problems or even addictions, children in boarding schools may be better protected against this problem.

In general, due to the high level of discipline students are taught on a daily basis, they are more likely to study hard and to learn quite fast.

This may give them an important advantage when it comes to college applications.

Kids from boarding school may also have it easier to keep up with the strict pace of some elite universities since they learned from an early age on to study hard while other kids from conventional schools may have a harder time adapting to the learning pace in college.

Some boarding schools also have quite nice traditions which have been practiced centuries ago and will still be celebrated.

For students in those boarding schools, this can be quite exciting and can also broaden their horizon since they will get a better feeling of how life looked centuries ago and what was important to people in former ages.

Boarding schools are not only meant for local children, they also have plenty of partnerships for international students.

Thus, there is often a big variety of different cultures in boarding school, which can be quite interesting and also quite beneficial for students since they get to experience different cultures over time.

Boarding schools also often promote a variety of personal development programs.

For your future career, it is not only your knowledge of hard skills that makes you succeed in the corporate world.

It is also important how you present your results, how you communicate to clients and so on.

In order to perfect all of this, it is crucial growing on a mental level.

Boarding schools recognized that and children are taught from an early age on what is important in this regard so that they can incorporate those characteristics into adulthood.

Boarding schools are also known to be quite innovative and to provide students with the latest technologies in order to improve the learning experience.

This can be quite beneficial for students since they will be able to get to know the latest innovations in time and will often have an advantage over other students regarding technological knowledge. In turn, this may translate into better job opportunities.

Mentoring is also a popular thing in boarding schools.

Many successful people claim that it is important to have a mentor in order to really learn what it needs to be successful in our current society.

Boarding schools provide children with a mentor who takes care of them and who is there to answer questions and to assist them with all kinds of issues.

Disadvantages of Boarding Schools

Tuition fees can be quite high, being away from your family, children may get homesick, no clear separation of school and leisure, difficulties to find friends outside boarding school, also difficult for parents, quality of boarding schools greatly varies, some kids may not feel comfortable, pressure on kids may be high, gender separation, mental issues, special talents may not be supported.

As we have seen before, boarding schools can have many important advantages for children.

However, there are also some issues related to boarding schools.

For example, boarding schools often have pretty high tuition fees which can be as high as 50,000 USD per year.

Thus, only quite privileged children from wealthy families might have the opportunity to attend those schools.

Paying this sum of money will never be possible for a middle-class family.

Therefore, boarding schools may be reserved for kids from rich families, which could be considered to be unfair since every kid should have similar educational opportunities.

Another disadvantage of boarding schools is that children are away from their families all year long.

This can be quite problematic since parents and children may miss each other quite a lot and many families may not be able to emotionally deal with this problem.

Some children will also never be able to form a strong connection to their parents since they will simply not see them too often from an early age.

Some children may also not be able to deal with being away from home at all.

They may get homesick and may not be able to concentrate and learn since they always think about going back home.

Therefore, for some children, boarding schools will simply not be the right place to grow up since they will not be emotionally stable enough.

Opponents of boarding schools also often claim that there is no clear separation between school and leisure in boarding schools and that this might not be healthy for children in the long run.

In their eyes, children should have a clear cut when school is over and should focus on playing outside and other things instead of staying on the campus all day long.

Thus, this lack of separation of school and leisure time may be emotionally challenging for some kids.

Even though there are often quite strong bonds and friendships between children in boarding school, those kids will have almost no friends outside boarding school since they simply live on campus and will not be able to leave it too often.

Thus, apart from the connections in boarding school, those kids may be quite lonely.

This may be especially bad for kids who have difficulties to find friends in boarding school since they might end up with no friends at all.

Sending your kids to boarding school may not only be difficult for your children, it might also be a large emotional burden for you.

Imagine your kid will stay in boarding school all year long and you will only see it a few times a year.

Chances are that you might be quite sad and regret that you sent your kid to boarding school sooner or later.

Thus, before sending your children to boarding school, make sure that you are emotionally ready for it.

Although boarding schools are known to provide high-quality education, there are also some schools around which only provide quite poor education levels.

Thus, before choosing a boarding school, make sure that you read reviews and also talk to your family and friends in order to ensure a high-quality education for your children.

Depending on the character of your kid, boarding schools might not be the right way to go.

For instance, some children are not ready to leave their parents behind at a quite young age.

They rather want to stay at home and attend a regular school.

Thus, you should really figure out if your kid has the characteristics and the mental strengths for boarding school before deciding to send your child there.

Before sending your kid to boarding school, you should also consider the fact that the pressure on children in those schools can be quite high and that this may lead to serious health issues for those children in the long run.

Some institutions are quite strict regarding their rules and also demand excellent academic results from their students in order to sustain their good reputation across the country.

Although academic excellence can be a good thing, too much of it might lead to excessive pressure which might even emotionally harm children.

Many boarding schools also have strict gender separation.

This may be considered to be problematic since if children are not able to talk to other children of the opposite gender, they might not be able to emotionally develop in a healthy manner.

It can also be considered to be quite outdated to separate children from the opposite gender.

Thus, gender separation may be another serious downside of boarding schools.

Like in many other schools, bullying is also a problem in boarding school.

However, it can be even more severe in boarding schools since children have to stay on campus all day long and even have to sleep there.

Therefore, if children are victims of bullying, they might have a quite hard time in boarding schools since they will not have any time off at all.

Due to homesickness or bullying, some children may also suffer from serious mental issues .

This may include depressions or also eating disorders.

Since their parents are often hundreds or even thousands of miles away, children in boarding schools may feel quite lonely and may not be able to get proper assistance in order to solve their problems.

Even though the education levels in boarding schools are often quite good, the focus in boarding school is often set on mainstream education and children who have special talents may not be supported sufficiently.

Therefore, for instance, children who might have had the opportunity to become world-class athletes in a certain niche sport may not be supported sufficiently in this area and may not be able to convert their talent into a profession later on.

Boarding School Pros & Cons – Summary List

Should you send your kid to boarding school.

Whether you should send your child to boarding school is a difficult question.

Although boarding schools have many important advantages, there are also some serious problems that can’t be overlooked.

Before making a decision, make sure to check out all the pros and cons of boarding schools and also talk to your child about it.

Only then will it be possible to do what’s best for your child and also for your family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_school

https://www.britannica.com/topic/boarding-school

https://www.boardingschoolreview.com/blog/subcategory/history

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After finishing university, I traveled around the world. From this time on, I wanted to make a contribution to ensure a livable future for the next generations in every part of our beautiful planet.

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Day School Versus Boarding School – Which Should I Choose?

It’s rarely easy to decide on the right educational path for your child, and for many parents there are few decisions bigger than whether to choose a day school or a boarding school.

You should also read…

How to Pick a UK Boarding School
11 Easy Ways for Parents to Support Their Children’s Studies

If you’re in the throes of making this decision yourself, you’ll probably find that your instincts ultimately make the decision for you. But you can make a more informed choice by weighing up the pros and cons of both types of school and seeing which comes out on top. This article introduces you to the advantages and disadvantages of both boarding and day schools; you may wish to add your own pros and cons to these lists, as a lot will depend on your own family’s circumstances.

Boarding school pros

Let’s start by looking at the advantages of sending your child to boarding school.

Round-the-clock education and development

A major advantage of the boarding school experience is the fact that the learning never stops. Your child is immersed in an educational environment, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and even when they’re outside the classroom, they’re still learning important life skills that they wouldn’t learn through sitting at home in the evenings and at weekends. Most boarding schools are very strict about homework, so you can be confident that your child is getting it done in a distraction-free environment – often in designated time slots, so your child has no choice but to do it.

Boarding school offers superb extra-curricular opportunities

There’s no doubt about it: the extra-curricular activities on offer at boarding schools are almost certainly going to be far more extensive than those on offer at a day school. Boarding schools have a responsibility to keep children busy in their downtime, and most of them really go to town on the activities they offer. This means that your children will have numerous opportunities to get involved in new hobbies, thereby developing non-academic skills that will be valuable for the real world. What’s more, they can take part in these new hobbies in the evenings and weekends without inconveniencing anybody, because they take place on site; and you can rest assured that they’re being kept busy and out of trouble.

Boarding school comes with a built-in social life

Image shows two teenage girls laughing together.

Boarding school comes with a built-in social life, which means that your children will be living with their friends – a recipe for good fun! Many children want to go to boarding school for this very reason (after all, they’ve probably all read Harry Potter and love the idea of roaming around school at all hours, having adventures with their friends). It’s also a good option for only children, who don’t have siblings to play with back home. This lifestyle isn’t just fun, though. It develops your child’s confidence because they’re forced to interact with other children constantly, and they’ll be learning to get on with lots of different personalities, which is a useful skill for life.

Boarding school can improve family relationships

Image shows a teenager standing in the doorway of an incredibly messy room.

Contrary to what you might expect, many families find that the quality of their family relationship actually improves when a child goes to boarding school. This is because nobody gets under each other’s feet, and because you see each other less often, the time you do spend together is of a higher quality. What’s more, your child is away from any family tension or stress that may be happening at home, and you miss the teenage angst during term-time, too. You stop being the one nagging your child to do their homework or telling them what they should and shouldn’t do – that’s up to someone else, so they associate time with you with more positive things.

Boarding school fosters independence

Going to boarding school cultivates self-reliance, getting your child used to the idea of being away from home. This makes it easier for them to make the transition from school to life at university, as well as equipping them with the independence they need to succeed when they leave the education system altogether and go out to work.

There’s no school run – which frees up more time for everyone

The time spent travelling between home and school eats significantly into your child’s day (not to mention yours), and another big advantage of boarding school is that the daily school run is a thing of the past. Without this travel time, children are free to do much more with their day, such as sports or music practice, or extra study. For you, it means that you’re not having to rush about driving your child to and from school.

Boarding school is the perfect solution for busy parents

It’s not just the school run that eats into your day when your children aren’t at boarding school. You’re called upon to make all their meals, supervise homework and ferry them to and from extra-curricular activities. If you both work, there will reach a point when it’s not feasible to do all this. Boarding school provides the ideal solution for career-focused parents who are anxious that their children are adequately supervised at all times and encouraged to participate in a variety of out-of-school activities. It allows you to maintain your career at the same time as ensuring that your children get the best possible start in life.

Boarding school cons

As with any sort of education, the boarding school experience is not without its disadvantages – even in the modern boarding school, which places huge emphasis on the wellbeing of its pupils. The harsh discipline and lack of home comforts associated with boarding school in days gone by are, thankfully, very much a thing of the past, but there are still one or two drawbacks with this style of education. Let’s see what they are.

Parents feel much less involved in their child’s upbringing

Image shows a family walking together on the beach.

There’s no escaping the fact that when you send your child to boarding school, you’re handing over a major chunk of their upbringing to someone else. When your child goes to boarding school, you’re relinquishing a lot of the decisions you’d normally make about what your child is and isn’t allowed to do, and the responsibility for their upbringing falls temporarily on someone else’s shoulders. They will probably be going to someone else – a school-appointed pastoral carer – with their problems, which may make you feel redundant. Many parents find this idea hard to cope with, and feel a great sense of loss when their children go off to boarding school. You won’t be there to chat to them over breakfast or say goodnight to them when they go to bed, and in these vital years of your child’s life, when they’re growing fast, you’ll inevitably miss out on a lot of their childhood.

Homesickness will strike at some point

Homesickness is likely to rear its ugly head at some point or another, at least in the beginning. Your child will be away from home for the first time, in an unfamiliar environment away from their family and home, and their new way of life will take some getting used to. They will almost certainly get used to it sooner or later – but both you and they might find it difficult when they’re grappling with feelings of homesickness, and it will probably make you wonder whether you’ve done the right thing.

Boarding school costs significantly more

Image shows the exterior of an HSBC bank.

The other disadvantage of boarding school is that it costs significantly more than day school – you can expect to pay over £30,000 a year at the top boarding schools. There are state boarding schools for those for whom these sorts of costs are unfeasible, but you’re still looking at £10,000 or so a year even for that; only the tuition is paid for by the Government, so you still need to stump up the cash for the boarding costs.

Day school pros

Now let’s turn our attention to day schools. There’s not so much to say on the pros and cons of these, as day school is a much more standard educational model about which few people have strong opinions either way; so although this section will be somewhat shorter than the space we’ve devoted to boarding schools, this doesn’t mean we’re advocating one over the other.

You get to see your children every night

Image shows a girl standing against a height chart.

The primary reason for choosing a day school over a boarding school is that you get to see your children every morning when they wake up and every afternoon when they come home from school. You get to put them to bed at night, make their meals, take responsibility for their homework and generally retain much more control over what happens to them. Any concerns they have can be discussed with you, rather than a school-appointed carer, and you can raise any concerns you have with them and ensure that they’re exposed to your own values (obviously if you did send them to boarding school, you’d pick a school you felt would instil the right values – but it’s still not the same as them learning directly from you).

Day school is much cheaper than boarding school

Another major argument in favour of sending your children to day school rather than boarding school is that it’s considerably cheaper. You’ll have to spend more on food when they’re at home, of course, and you’ll have to spend more on driving them to school and extra-curricular activities. But you’d still save a massive amount of money by having them home each night.

Day school cons

There are very few disadvantages associated with day school, as a good one will give your child the same level of academic education and they’ll have ample opportunities to make friends. The only real disadvantage we could think of is discussed below.

Day school is demanding on your time

Image shows someone in a high-viz jacket reading "Royal Air Force", standing by a plane.

Day school generally places many more demands on your time, so it may not be ideal if you have a busy career that makes it difficult for you to devote the necessary time to taking your children to places, cooking meals or supervising homework. Unless the school is within walking distance, you may have to drive your children to school and pick them up every day, to say nothing of extra-curricular activities, which may not take place at school. Day schools also tend to expect more parental involvement in things like Parent Teacher Associations, which you may not have time to take part in.

So which should I choose?

If money isn’t an object for you, and you want your child to be totally immersed in an educational environment, and/or you have a busy career yourself, boarding school has much to offer and it’s worth seriously considering it. As we’ve seen, there are a great many benefits to a boarding school education that your child won’t receive from a conventional day school education.

Image shows a parent and a child having lunch together.

If, on the other hand, you can’t bear the thought of handing over responsibility for your children to someone else, or not being there to say goodnight to your children each night, boarding school probably isn’t the right decision for you. You may feel that the benefits of a boarding school education don’t outweigh the sense of loss you’d feel on missing out on so much of their childhood. You can, of course, enjoy the best of both worlds: your child could be a day school pupil at a top boarding school and receive many of the benefits of a boarding school education, without the drawbacks outlined above. Ultimately, however, nobody else can make the decision for you. It’s a personal decision, and one that depends very much on your family circumstances and on the personalities involved. Your child’s opinion matters, too, so it’s not a decision you should make without discussing it with them first. Careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of boarding school, along with open discussion as a family, will allow you to arrive at a decision you feel is right for everyone.

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What My School Means to Me: Essays from 3 High Schoolers

How students at an unusual school think—and write—about their experience.

In January, I visited the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, a public residential high school in Greenville. Artistically talented students from around the state spend two or three of their high school years in dedicated pursuit of their art—dance, drama, music, visual arts, or creative writing—along with their academic curriculum. I wrote about it here .

I asked Scott Gould, a creative writing teacher at the school, if he would ask his students to write me a short essay about their school. This was a wide-open request; I wanted to hear whatever perspective the students wanted to offer about their experience at the school. Among the essays the students submitted, here are three of my favorites, unedited and untouched. I’d like to share them with you.

The first is by Cameron Messinides, a junior from Camden, SC:

Long-Distance My mother called on Sunday to tell me our herd of goats, previously twenty-one strong, had been reduced to three. Two feral dogs squeezed through a hole in the pasture fence and killed anything they could catch. My parents and brother arrived during the massacre. My father jumped the fence to chase the dogs and shot the slower one with a pistol. On his way back, he heard a few scattered bleats and followed the sounds. In a gully, he found two billies and the last nanny. They had survived by shoving themselves into an abandoned chicken coop. Afterwards, my family walked among the carcasses--once white, now bloodstained and caked with rain-softened clay. We wanted to find life, my mother said. They gave up at four in the afternoon, and my father and brother made a pile of the bodies in the woods, to be buried later. Phone calls like this are common now. I've been in a boarding school since August, and every weekend my mother seems to find something new to break to me. It's not always bad. The weekend before, she called to tell me my brother enrolled in a birding retreat on the South Carolina coastline. And before that, she told me about the new color she picked for the living room walls. I'm still not used to this kind of communication. I miss immediacy. A year ago, when I still lived with them, I would know all this. She wouldn't have to tell me two or three days later. I'd like to say I've adjusted, but I haven't. The Wednesday after the goats died, she called again. She told me she couldn't shake what she had seen. She worried. Would the dogs' owner show up? How about the surviving dog? What if he came back? She hadn't been sleeping, and when she did, she dreamt of the bloody bodies, the torn sides of a billy, the kids crushed into the mud. I told her I knew how she felt, but I don't. I don't think it's possible. She sent me only one picture of the scene, a close-up of the surviving nanny's nose, ripped open by the dog's teeth. The rest I have to imagine. I imagine the dogs—Brown? Black?—chasing the herd across a winter field, hooves and paws tearing up dead grass. I imagine stumbling kids. I imagine the deputy who arrived a few hours later, gray-haired and perhaps a slow talker. None of it is certain. I still sleep easily. That's the cost of our separation: her anxieties don't travel the phone lines, and I can't make myself care. But I want to care. Some days I only want to be home, in the ranch-style with green siding and the stump in the front yard, which is the only remnant of the rotting oak my family cut down without me. I'd walk to the pasture with my father, take the shovel he offers me, and dig with him, shoulder-to-shoulder, a hole big enough to put all eighteen dead goats under three or four feet of orange clay. Then, we return home, and I sit in the living room next to my mother, tell her she can sleep now. Even hours into the night, after she has gone to bed, I sit, surrounded by lamplight and the color of the freshly-painted walls, three coats of Townhouse Tan, and listen to my brothers. They lie side-by-side on the hearth, birder's guidebook open before them, and take turns whispering names to each other: bobwhite, cardinal, tufted titmouse.

Next, by Shelley Hucks, a senior from Florence, SC:

Florentine In the heart of South Carolina, the railroad tracks converge over swampland, and fields are laced with cotton in the Dog Days of early August. The summer heat rolls in, unstoppable and rests between cypress knees and Spanish moss. The place can’t decide what to be: it’s one-third urban, one-third rural, and one-third swamp. The people seem to fall victim to a cycle of poverty, of being at sixteen what their parents were at eighteen, what their own children will be at fourteen. It’s not easy to get out. The place is called Florence, and I lived there for sixteen years before moving three hours away to study creative writing at a boarding school. In upstate South Carolina is the Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. It’s situated just off Greenville’s downtown area, with Reedy River Falls Park in the school’s backyard. Downtown Greenville is an arts community, with performing centers and theaters, galleries, art festivals and craft fairs, and restaurants willing to provide venues for writing club readings or jazz band performances. Not only is the atmosphere different, but the entire landscape: from my dorm room, I can see the hazy silhouette of mountains. At the Governor’s School, I’ve studied under excellent teachers. I’ve been exposed to new authors and genres, learned to be curious, analytical, to believe in the deliberation of every line of poetry and each line of dialogue in a short story. I’ve learned to put my personal life into artistic context with the help of professionals. I’ve learned to become aware. To make something strange, beautiful, something important. And, something particularly valuable to me because of my immense pride in my hometown, I’ve learned to appreciate a strong sense of setting, the way characters can function in so many complex ways. I’ve learned how to convey Florence in words. Governor’s School has provided me with the training to write about the content that I grew up with, the material I naturally have to offer. Every story I write takes place in some type of Florence, with its tangible sensation of heat trapped in the swamp, the perpetual presence of desperation. All of my characters are based on Florentines: single mothers I’ve met at work, the mysterious neighbor who passed out already-opened Halloween candy, or the woman who showed up to church drinking hairspray. Going home on breaks, or for the summer, has altered my perspective of Florence. Instead of seeing tragic figures living in a never-changing place, I see characters full of complexities living in a place as undecided as they are. Once, the chain-link fence covered in hubcaps was ugly. But now I see it as armor, protecting the women on the porch, who sip sweet tea and watch another fistfight unfold in the street, those men who wordlessly understand the ritual required to live here.

Finally, by Jackson Trice, a senior from Simpsonville, SC:

Outside the Lines I forget how strange my school sounds to the rest of the world until I leave it. On a card at the front desk inside a college admissions building, I am told to write the name of my high school. The full name, South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, does not fit on the dotted line, and I have to draw an arrow to the back of the card, and write the rest there. When I say my school’s name out loud to family members, it sounds prestigious, almost regal. But on the first day of school here it is made clear that I was chosen based on potential, and not necessarily talent. It’s this ego smashing that happens throughout junior year that creates the atmosphere of Governor’s School. You don’t get “good,” you just make progress. You are not special, you’ve just been given an excellent opportunity. I don’t know how much Governor’s School has changed me until I meet up with friends from my old school at a football game during fall break. I live in Simpsonville, South Carolina only a fifteen minute drive from downtown Greenville. Still, all these kids know about my school are rumors. “I’ve heard the dancers are super catty,” one says. “I’ve heard there’s, like, crazy amounts of sex.” I answer, “Sometimes,” and “That’s a good joke,” respectively. I try to explain to them that yes, I have real school work on top of art work. No, I can’t have a boy in my dorm room—I can’t even have Advil. Hey, hey, there are a few republicans. Like, two, maybe? I quickly realize that the magic of this school is lost as soon as I try and pin words to it. I stop coming home for Friday night football games. I choose, instead, to stay on campus. There are two creative writing classrooms that make up our department. Each is packed with books and long desks and computers. Only creative writers are allowed in these rooms, and there’s a giddiness in the seclusion of it. Monday through Thursday, we stay in the rooms after hours to get work done, but on Fridays, we kick our shoes off and run around to celebrate the weekend. We lay on the desks and talk to each other and laugh until our sides ache. We share secrets and stories and we belong to these rooms, to the spines of our favorite books on the bookshelves. We belong to each other. There are, of course, the nights when AP Chemistry keeps me up until four in the morning. There are the days where workshop is brutal, and I never want to write another word again. There are those scary moments where I feel that the pressure is too much and I fantasize about going to regular school. Maybe then, I could learn to drive, go to real high school parties, eat my mother’s delicious food anytime I wanted. But then there’s a drama student playing guitar in the academic stairwell. The sound of his voice spins up the flights of stairs, bouncing off walls in wistful echoes. It calms me. There’s hot chocolate at the Starbucks across the street, and there’s the beauty of that street, which is lined with small trees dressed up in white Christmas lights, illuminating the sidewalk. There’s my friend who sits with me inside Starbucks and talks about Rilke and Miley Cyrus with equal insight and tenacity. When I return, there’s a group of students outside the residential life building, blocking the doors. They’re all dancing, and singing to the beat of their clapping hands, stomping feet: “You have to dance to pass. Dance, dance, to pass.” And because I can sense that there is something wonderfully magical about this place, I feel that I must obey them. It is only necessary. I am a terrible dancer, but in this moment, I dance shamelessly. When the crowd is satisfied with my moves, they cheer, and finally part, letting me into the building, welcoming me home.

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Predatory … Captain Grimes (Douglas Hodge) with Paul Pennyfeather (Jack Whitehall) in the BBC’s Decline and Fall.

School of hard knocks: the dark underside to boarding school books

Violence, cruelty and sexual confusion are as much a part of boarding school literature as japes and cricket. Alex Renton surveys a troubled genre from Kipling to Rowling

“M ichael was ordered to take down his trousers and kneel on the headmaster’s sofa with the top half of his body hanging over one end of the sofa. The great man then gave him one terrific crack. After that there was a pause. The cane was put down and the headmaster began filling his pipe from a tin of tobacco. He also started to lecture the kneeling boy about sin and wrongdoing. Soon, the cane was picked up again and a second tremendous crack was administered upon the trembling buttocks. Then the pipe-filling business and the lecture went on for maybe 30 seconds. Then came the third crack of the cane ... At the end of it all, a basin, a sponge and a small clean towel were produced by the headmaster, and the victim was told to wash away the blood before pulling up his trousers.”

The writer is Roald Dahl , on his school, Repton, in the early 1930s. Apart from one fact, it isn’t remarkable: it echoes accounts of boarding school stories in the 19th and 20th century that tell quite blithely of extraordinary violence and psychological cruelty. These appear to have been as traditional an element of the curriculum for the privileged child as were fagging, rugby, chapel and Latin. The notable detail Dahl provides is that the “great man” was a clergyman named Geoffrey Fisher, later to become the archbishop of Canterbury.

Savage discipline, along with sexual confusion and formalised bullying, are so common in the schooldays memoirs of the British elite in the 19th and 20th centuries that you have to conclude that parents wanted and paid for their children to experience these things. To most of the class that used them, the private schools were factories that would reliably produce men and women who would run Britain, its politics, business and culture. Boarding school was a proven good investment. So thousands of men and women who had suffered awfully, by their own admission, sent their children off for just the same.

At St George’s school, Ascot, the eight-year-old Winston Churchill was whipped hard for damaging the headmaster’s hat and for taking sugar from a pantry. “Flogging with the birch in accordance with the Eton fashion was a great feature of the curriculum,” he wrote in My Early Life . Churchill’s headmaster was another clergyman, the Rev Henry Sneyd-Kynnersley . Another St George’s old boy, the artist Roger Fry , wrote in his private diaries of these “solemn rituals”, which sometimes resulted in not just blood but excrement splashed around the caning block; Virginia Woolf , Fry’s first biographer, censored this information, along with details of both Fry’s and Sneyd-Kynnersley’s sexual arousal during the ceremony.

What all the published memoirs, from Churchill’s to Christopher Hitchens ’s and a host of others, share most obviously is their tone: wry, tolerant and rather proud. It didn’t do to make a fuss or – more important – betray the caste. There are few men or women who went through the boarding school system who were prepared to wholly deny the benefits of the experience, at least before the later 20th century. George Orwell and his schoolmate Cyril Connolly had a go, using – and in Orwell’s case, fictionalising – the baroque horrors of their south coast prep school, St Cyprian’s .

‘Lifeless prunes and spiritual vampires’ … WH Auden was scathing about his teacher’s at Gresham’s.

Among the intellectual left in the 30s, a perception grew that Britain’s social divides, and the peculiar psychology of its ruling class, might just owe something to the uniquely bizarre education the elite underwent. In a 1934 volume of reminiscences, The Old School , edited by Graham Greene, writers including WH Auden , the diarist Harold Nicolson and the novelist Eileen Arnot Robertson compared the bulldozing of children into conformity at their schools to fascism. Auden dubs the teachers at Gresham’s in Norfolk “lifeless prunes and spiritual vampires”. Robertson’s essay about Sherborne School for Girls – “The Potting Shed of the English Rose” – sums up the ethos: “Run about, girls, like boys, and then you won’t have to think of them.” It is a portrait of a prison-factory designed to machine the girls into spiritual clones – reliable spouses for rulers.

There are few negative accounts of the traditional boarding schools by women. That may be in part because physical violence was less common, though the emotional abuse and neglect they encountered could be just as damaging. These institutions were founded later – there were only five “public” schools for girls by the end of the 19th century, all of them quite deliberately aping the boys’ ones. But in the late 1960s, 150,000 British children were boarding, about a third of them female. By then, the girls’ schools had their own literature: the addictive, unambivalent stories of japes, hockey and simple social quandaries turned out by Angela Brazil and Enid Blyton . Like JK Rowling , Blyton did not board and Brazil only did in her late teens. The only anti-boarding school novel by a woman in the first half of the 20th century is Frost in May , Antonia White’s fictionalised account of her rigid Catholic convent school, Woldingham. There, sexuality was so feared that the girls were not permitted to see their own bodies: baths were taken in tents made of calico.

Novelists were telling of the dark and brutal times to be had at boarding school much earlier than the essay-writers. Dickens sent Nicholas Nickleby to Dotheboys Hall and Charlotte Brontë put the orphan Jane Eyre into Lowood Institute: at both of them hypocritical, grasping adults set out to break the children, physically and spiritually. In 1888, Rudyard Kipling published a heart-rending short story about little children dispatched – as he was, at five years old – from the colonies into the hands of uncaring adults back in Britain. Ten years later, he invented a school fiction subgenre with the rebellious schoolchild as hero, battling dictatorial and stupid adult teachers: Stalky and Co leads to Just William , to Molesworth and Down With Skool and finally to Harry Potter . The anti-authoritarian pranks of Stalky and his friends reappear again and again in subsequent English fiction – not least in the post-second world war tales of British officers in PoW camps, fooling dim German guards.

Sir Cedric Hardwicke’s Dr Thomas Arnold canes a pupil in a scene from Tom Brown’s School Days (1940).

Having set The Longest Journey (1907) around his snobbish, militaristic school Tonbridge – called Sawston in the novel – EM Forster delivered the harshest of all one-liners about the products of the British public school. They go out into the world, he wrote in 1927, “with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts”. But by the 1920s, more of them were opening. To most Britons, possession of limited knowledge and not too much emotional intelligence must have seemed a sensible preparation for joining the club that ran the world. “They say that Eton taught us nothing,” crowed the first world war general Sir Herbert Plumer at a dinner of the school’s old boys’ society in 1916. “But I must say they taught it very well.”

The cricket field triumphs and the practical jokes, the floggings and the bullies of the traditional boarding school were by the 1890s the staples of a literary genre with an audience far beyond the class that used them, or even that aspired to them. The simple cast of brave, true sportsmen, of swots and of cowards, cads and bullies invented by Thomas Hughes in Tom Brown’s School Days marched on through hundreds of comics and novels for children; if you read accounts of British foreign policy before and after the second world war, it seems as though the playground precepts and stock characters of the schooldays novel have peopled the world. School and sport provided metaphors for proper Britishness. “Play up! and play the game!” – the refrain of Sir Henry Newbolt’s immensely popular poem “Vitaï Lampada” – was a guiding motto for everything from war to marriage.

It was clear that a stiff upper lip, loyalty to the team and a smile at adversity were the attributes most useful in life – and you obtained these at the right schools. By the 1920s, no crime, no brutality of those establishments was too much for their customers, or the wider public. Evelyn Waugh portrayed a shambolic prep school in his first novel, modelled on one at which he had taught. Decline and Fall features fiction’s first account of another traditional cast member of the boarding school drama, the predatory Captain Grimes. His actual crime is only hinted at in the novel; the BBC’s current rollicking TV adaptation is much more open about the “peg-legged pederast”. But the sophisticated reader would have had no problem understanding what Grimes did – and had been sacked from the army and many boarding schools for doing. Grimes is acclaimed as one of the century’s greatest comic creations. In his diaries, Waugh writes with loving admiration of Grimes’s original, the disgraced former army officer WRB “Dick” Young. A serial molester, certainly, but also, according to Waugh, a resourceful and witty man of “shining candour”, and they remained friends until Decline and Fall was published. Later, by way of revenge, Young wrote a school novel in which Waugh was the paedophile teacher.

And so to Hogwarts. With all its gothic filigree, this most exclusive college looks very like the 19th century Fettes College. The series has the archetypes – sinister teachers and over-friendly ones, sporty heroes and school bullies. While the books don’t have any flogging in them, they do have other key elements, including the arcane ritualistic training to join an elite.

Harry and his friends may well have been the best advert for private boarding schools since the Duke of Wellington boasted that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. It could be coincidence, but the 30-year decline in numbers came to an end in 2000, just as the third Harry Potter novel was published. Since then, though average full-boarding fees are now around £35,000 per annum, the pupil count has been stable at 70,000, a third of them the children of wealthy foreigners. Later this month, when the Easter holidays end, more than 4,000 children under 10 years old will say goodbye to their families, shipped off to where there is the promise of adventure, but not love. Some of them – as one mother, “forced” by her daughter to allow her to board, told me – will pack Harry Potter wands too. Your heart breaks for them still.

Evelyn Waugh
Rudyard Kipling
Winston Churchill

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Why I’m Writing Novels Set in Boarding Schools (For a Grown-up Audience!)

Well, what’s not to love about novels set in boarding schools? Most of us grew up enjoying the likes of Malory Towers and The Chalet School, even if we never set foot in a boarding school ourselves.

What’s in it for Readers?

For readers , there’s something compelling about the world of the boarding school , with its unique rules and vocabulary that wouldn’t make sense beyond its boundaries. Readers enjoy joining that fantasy world and feeling a part of it – hence the huge merchandise sales for the Harry Potter franchise.

The setting naturally throws together disparate characters with interesting and varied backgrounds, all great ingredients for a story .

The tropes of boarding school life will be familiar to adults who grew up reading Chalet School et al, which means there is plenty of scope for gentle humour built on their fondess for these vintage classics.

What’s in it for Writers?

For the novelist , the boarding school offers a contained community in which characters are thrown together with no escape. They must face challenges and overcome them together, and their characters grow in the process.

To a writer of mystery stories , the boarding school, usually segregated from the outside world by a clear physical boundary, presents a neat device to isolate victim, suspects and onlookers while the crime is solved .

In the Footsteps of Agatha Christie (but with more laughs…)

St Bride’s isn’t quite as isolated as Agatha Christie ‘s famous stranded train in Murder on the Orient Express (it’s just a bike ride away from Wendlebury Barrow, the village in my Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries, and there is some cross-over between the two series) – but you get the idea.

(Incidentally, my current work-in-progress, Murder Your Darlings , the sixth Sophie Sayers mystery, is set on an island beset by a storm, from which none can escape, and which the police can’t access – as in Christie’s And Then There Were None , although my body count will be much lighter.)

There’s another reason I chose to write about a boarding school. It’s a world I know well , having worked in one for thirteen years, as a member of the office team rather than as a teacher. I loved the sense of community, just as I love the community spirit of the Cotswold village in which I’ve lived for nearly thirty years, so this is in part a celebration of community . The world of St Bride’s is completely fictitious, with all the characters and situations completely invented, but the school I worked at was the springboard for my imagination, just as living in Hawkesbury Upton inspired me to invent the world of Wendlebury Barrow in the Sophie Sayers Village Mysterie s.

What’s Different about St Bride’s?

While I have fun with school routines and customs such as the prefect system and school dinners, the focus of the St Bride’s series will be the behaviour of the staff . I remember as a schoolgirl being fascinated by the secret world of the staffroom, and the formal relationship fostered between staff and pupils.

For example, at the girls’ grammar school I attended between the ages of 11 and 14, pupils were not allowed to know the first names of staff . In Secrets at St Bride’s , the girls are running a book on the teachers’ names. One of the younger pupils speculates that Miss Bliss’s initial O in stands for “Obergine” – because she’s heard the Geography teacher, Miss Brook, complain over her moussaka at lunch that she hates aubergine.

However, at St Bride’s, the secrecy goes one step further : the staff keep secrets not only from the girls, but from each other, with potentially deadly results. With the story told by new arrival Miss Lamb (but you can call her Gemma!), you, the reader, will become slowly acclimatised to school life as she does. Together you unravel the surprising secrets that are putting the community at risk.

What I Don’t Write About in this Series

What I’ve steadfastly avoided in this series is the kind of boarding school scandal that pops up now and again in the media or in memoirs. You won’t find any corporal punishment or abuse at St Bride’s – it’s a gentle, caring environment, but not without perils of a different kind. What are those perils? You’ll have to read the books to find out!

How to Order Your Copy of Secrets at St Bride’s

The first St Bride’s novel, Secrets at St Bride’s , is now available to order online and will soon be available to order from high street bookshops too.

Order the paperback from Amazon here , or quote ISBN 978-1911223436 at your local bookshop. (If they can’t source it, please ask them to contact me directly for a supply.)
Order the Kindle edition of the ebook here or click here to order the ebook for any other ereader, such as Kobo, Apple or Nook.

As ever, if you read and enjoy the book, please consider leaving a brief review online, to encourage others to read it too! Thank you very muc h!

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Author: Debbie Young

English author of warm, witty cosy mystery novels including the popular Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries and the Gemma Lamb/St Bride's School series. Novels published by Boldwood Books, all other books by Hawkesbury Press. Represented by Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agents. Founder and director of the Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival. Course tutor for Jericho Writers. UK Ambassador for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Lives and writes in her Victorian cottage in the heart of the beautiful Cotswold countryside. View All Posts

$450,000 Homes in Kentucky, New Jersey and New York

A two-bedroom bungalow in Lexington, a 1925 home in Blairstown and a Colonial Revival house in Buffalo.

By Angela Serratore

Rick Rickerson, Pending Media

Lexington, Ky. | $449,000

A 1924 bungalow with two bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms, on a 0.1-acre lot.

This house is in Kenwick, a neighborhood less than two miles from downtown and a five-minute drive from the University of Kentucky. It is within walking distance of a coffee shop, several breweries and restaurants serving Italian food, Hawaiian barbecue and New American cuisine. Woodland Park, which has a playground, is 20 minutes away on foot. The Arboretum State Botanical Garden of Kentucky is a 10-minute drive.

Daniel Boone National Forest is about an hour and 15 minutes away. Driving to Louisville or Cincinnati takes about 90 minutes. Knoxville, Tenn., is three hours away.

Size: 1,326 square feet

Price per square foot: $339

Indoors: White and gray wood steps lead up to a covered porch with enough room for a bench swing.

The front door opens directly into the living room, which has hardwood floors, a gas fireplace and windows fitted with white shutters. The hardwood flooring continues to the left of the entry, into a dining room that faces a kitchen with white cabinetry, granite counters and stainless steel appliances, including a range with an electric cooktop. Also in this part of the house are a powder room and a door to the rear deck.

Both bedrooms are on the second floor, reached from stairs near the living room. The primary bedroom is big enough to hold a king-size bed and has a walk-in closet and a separate sitting area with windows overlooking the backyard. The bedroom across the hall also has a walk-in closet. They share a bathroom with a combination tub and shower lined in white subway tile.

The unfinished basement is used for storage.

Outdoor space: The deck behind the house has enough space for a dining table, a grill and lounge furniture. It steps down to a fenced yard landscaped with grass and a mature tree that provides shade. The detached garage has one parking spot.

Taxes: $2,388 (estimated)

Contact: Ryan Hilliard, The Brokerage, 859-469-1074; thebrokerageky.com

Kienlen Lattmann Sotheby's International Realty

Blairstown, N.J. | $449,000

A 1925 house with four bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms, on a 0.2-acre lot.

This house is a few blocks from the center of Blairstown, a Warren County township incorporated in 1845. It is about five minutes from Blair Academy, a boarding and day school for students in ninth through 12th grade, and from an Acme grocery store. A diner, a butcher shop, a post office and a farmers’ market open on Saturdays from June through November are within a 10-minute walk.

The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, a popular hiking and camping destination, and Shawnee Mountain Ski Area are half an hour away. Driving to Allentown, Pa., takes about an hour and 15 minutes. New York City is less than two hours away.

Size: 2,479 square feet

Price per square foot: $181

Indoors: The main entrance is under a portico at the side of the house, behind a wood picket fence.

The bright red front door opens into a living area with two sitting areas: One, at the front of the room, has access to the front porch through French doors; the other, closer to the entrance, has a fireplace with an ornate mantel. A sunroom looking out at mature trees is off the living area, at the back of the house. Through French doors toward the front of the house is a dining room that has access to the front porch through more French doors.

A short hallway off the dining room leads to a kitchen with robin’s-egg blue cabinetry, a white subway tile backsplash and stainless steel appliances. A powder room and another exterior entrance are off the kitchen.

All four bedrooms are off a central landing on the second floor, reached from stairs in the living room. The primary bedroom has plenty of natural light thanks to several large windows. One of the guest rooms has a private screened balcony; another is used as a home office. They all share a full bathroom with a combined tub and shower.

The top floor is used as a combined den and playroom.

Outdoor space: Behind the house is a stone patio with a fire table and room for chairs surrounding it. The detached garage has one parking spot and storage space for bikes and yard equipment.

Taxes: $5,832 (estimated)

Contact: Evie Tilney, Kienlen Lattmann Sotheby’s International Realty, 973-769-3072; sothebysrealty.com

The Ryan Connolly Team, Keller Williams Realty WNY

Buffalo | $444,900

A 1929 colonial revival house with three bedrooms, one full bathroom and two half bathrooms, on a 0.1-acre lot.

This house is in North Buffalo, a few blocks from Hertel Avenue, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. It is less than a 15-minute walk from a grocery store, a drugstore, a coffee shop and an independent movie theater. Delaware Park, which has a rose garden, a lake and a zoo, and Buffalo AKG Art Museum, housed in a 1905 Greek Revival building, are less than 10 minutes away by car.

Driving to Niagara Falls takes about half an hour. Rochester is about an hour and 15 minutes away. Toronto is a two-hour drive.

Size: 1,788 square feet

Price per square foot: $249

Indoors: The house sits behind a yard landscaped with grass and tall trees.

The front door opens into a foyer with a staircase to the second floor and access to a powder room.

To the right is a living room with high ceilings, large windows and a gas fireplace. This space is open to a dining room with a starburst-style chandelier and sliding-glass doors out to a patio.

Behind the dining room is a kitchen with plenty of cabinet space, a center island, stainless steel appliances and another exterior entrance.

All three bedrooms are on the second floor. The primary bedroom, at the top of the stairs, has built-in cabinetry, a deep closet and street-facing windows. One of the guest rooms has a balcony; both are big enough to hold queen-size beds. They all share a bathroom with a combined tub and shower.

A half bathroom and a combination den-and-media-room with carpeted floors are on the third level.

Outdoor space: The wide patio behind the house has room for a dining table, chairs and a grill. The neatly landscaped yard beyond has a stone fountain. The detached garage holds two cars.

Taxes: $4,896 (estimated)

Contact: Ryan Connolly, Ryan Connolly Team, Keller Williams Realty WNY, 716-908-6924; kw.com

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Essay on Boarding School
Boarding schools also offer a rich social environment. They bring together students from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and countries, promoting a global perspective and fostering cultural competency. This diversity can help students develop empathy, understanding, and respect for differences, which are critical skills in today's globalized ...
Everything You Need To Know About US Boarding Schools
In conclusion, boarding schools in the United States have a rich history and continue to provide students with unique educational experiences. They offer a holistic approach to education, combining rigorous academics with a supportive and nurturing living environment. Whether it's academic excellence, personal growth, or pursuing passions ...
10 Tips for Writing a Boarding School Application Essay
Make sure it is typed with good spacing (1.5 or double). Proof, proof, proof. Proofread your boarding school application essay yourself, then have someone else proofread it. Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. Make sure that your application is complete with an impressive essay when you apply to boarding school. Here are fool-proof 10 tips for writing ...
Benefits of Boarding Schools
Boarding schools typically offer this advantage over public school classrooms. At Hotchkiss, where the student body is approximately 600, the average class size is just 12 students. This gives everyone an opportunity to have their voice heard and learn from the perspectives of fellow students. 4. Personal Growth.
Boarding School Pros and Cons: History and Common Misconceptions
There's a misconception that boarding schools provide a uniform, one-size-fits-all education. However, many boarding schools offer a diverse curriculum with many courses and a focus on individual learning styles. Discipline and Rigidity. Some perceive boarding schools as overly strict and rigid, influenced by outdated stereotypes.
How to Write an Awesome Private School Admission Essay
Answer the essay question asked. This may seem obvious; however, it's very easy to steer off course when you get into a writing groove. Help your child refer back to the question and any associated instructions while they write. Remind them to try to stick to the word count, and make sure to answer all parts of the question.
Boarding School Essays: Example Admission Questions
Boarding school applications require the student to complete short and long answer essays. It is crucial that the student follow the instructions for completing the essays, including adhering to the required word count criteria. It is also very important that the student write the essays, and not an adult or other student. The student must.
Why Consider Boarding School?
or "Only rich kids go there." when you mention that you are thinking of sending your daughter to boarding school. There are many compelling reasons to go to boarding school. Academics, athletics, and extracurricular activities are just a few considerations. Here are the 10 top reasons why you should go to boarding school.
Boarding and Day School Students: A Large-Scale Multilevel
Introduction. Boarding schools 1 constitute a major mode of education in many countries. For example, in Australia (the site of the present study) there are an estimated 170 schools with boarding students, and 470 schools in the United Kingdom and 340 schools in North America that accommodate boarding students (Martin et al., 2014).There has been a growing body of research into boarding school ...
Four Reasons Why You Should Consider a Boarding School
Reason #1: Academics. At the heart of every boarding school is a rigorous academic program. By nature, boarding schools allow for expanded or enhanced curriculums compared to public schools. And because class sizes are typically smaller, teachers are able to provide more individualized attention. This combination translates into a high caliber ...
5 reasons why you should consider boarding school
Boarding schools helped prepare my children for college. The environment is open, much like a small college campus, yet they have the protection and oversight you would still want for your child between the ages of 14 to 18. Living "on their own," learning how best to study and prepare for classes, experiencing new cultures and languages as ...
How to Rock Your Boarding School Essay
Take it upon yourself to OWN your essay. Write about what you want to write about. This piece of your application is a great opportunity to tell the admissions committee something that you did not get across during your school visit. View the essay-writing process as an opportunity as opposed to another chore because a rockin' boarding school ...
459 Words Essay on Boarding Schools: Advantages and Disadvantages
Whatever the gains of a boarding school, the fact is that nothing can substitute parents while the children are growing up. It is really very cruel to send a child of 6 or 7 years of age to a boarding school. After the 6th or 7th grade, a child could be expected to cope with the problem of separation from parents, but before that it is a cruel ...
11 advantages of attending a boarding school
Summary. Attending a boarding school offers many advantages, teaching young adults important skills so that they grow with confidence, resilience and independence towards adulthood. Institut Montana has almost 100 years of experience as a boarding school, but it continues to look forward.
Boarding Schools Essay Example For FREE
Hire verified writer. $35.80 for a 2-page paper. It seems that the great learning atmosphere of boarding school can ensure the students to learn effectively and efficiently. Socially, boarding schools are fabulous way to prepare students for their adult life. To the young students, it is essential that developing to be a qualified social members.
10 Top Reasons to Go to Boarding School
8. You will have great arts programs and arts facilities. Theater, dance, music, fine arts, in short, anything and everything artistic is part of the opportunity which awaits you at most boarding schools. Several schools have magnificent performing arts centers and museums.
29 Major Pros & Cons Of Boarding Schools
Future business connections. Students may actually feel at home in school. Increases sense of responsibility of children. Contributes to the independence of pupils. Fosters discipline. Decision-making is encouraged. May prevent kids to do stupid things. Students may be more eager to learn. Boarding school traditions.
Day School Versus Boarding School
Boarding school costs significantly more. Boarding school is undeniably expensive. The other disadvantage of boarding school is that it costs significantly more than day school - you can expect to pay over £30,000 a year at the top boarding schools. There are state boarding schools for those for whom these sorts of costs are unfeasible, but ...
Essay Boarding Schools Are Better Than Day Schools
essay Boarding Schools Are Better Than Day Schools - Free download as Word Doc (.doc / .docx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. jiji
What My School Means to Me: Essays from 3 High Schoolers
Among the essays the students submitted, here are three of my favorites, unedited and untouched. I'd like to share them with you. The first is by Cameron Messinides, a junior from Camden, SC ...
Why We Chose Boarding Rather than Day School
Boarding schools typically finish classes at lunch on Wednesdays. The afternoon is given over to sports. Same thing on Saturdays. The variety of sports offered as well as the availability of many sports at the varsity level as well as intramurals made this feature of boarding school very attractive. The other feature of boarding school sports ...
School of hard knocks: the dark underside to boarding school books
The only anti-boarding school novel by a woman in the first ... brutal times to be had at boarding school much earlier than the essay-writers. ... a heart-rending short story about little children ...
Why I'm Writing Novels Set in Boarding Schools (For a Grown-up Audience!)
For readers, there's something compelling about the world of the boarding school, with its unique rules and vocabulary that wouldn't make sense beyond its boundaries. Readers enjoy joining that fantasy world and feeling a part of it - hence the huge merchandise sales for the Harry Potter franchise.
$450,000 Homes in Kentucky, New Jersey and New York
Size: 1,788 square feet. Price per square foot: $249. Indoors: The house sits behind a yard landscaped with grass and tall trees. The front door opens into a foyer with a staircase to the second ...