Blog

With the Brexit date of 29 March 2019 fast approaching we’re keen to give as much clarity as possible to current and prospective EU, EEA & Swiss students coming to study at independent boarding schools in England, Scotland and Wales.

The result is a series of blogs that address many of the key questions you may have about Brexit. This is the first, and deals with general aspects of Brexit:

All the British boarding schools we recommend have some enviable facilities and we often receive news of further developments. One such update came from Giggleswick School recently, when Olympic medallist triathlete Jonny Brownlee opened its new state of the art fitness centre.

Occupying a purpose-built extension to the school’s sports complex, the suite features the latest in weights, strength and conditioning training equipment, as well as top-end treadmills, cycle trainers, rowing machines and other cardio-vascular training aids.

We were delighted to receive a copy of West Buckland School’s first International Newsletter at the end of last term, especially as it reported their nomination for Boarding School of the Year in the TES Independent School Awards 2019.

A popular entry point for international students is the UK’s Year 11. This is the academic year during which students turn 16 years old, so it is often the first year many feel mature enough to take on the exciting challenge of living away from home and it fits well with educational systems in a number of other countries.

“I would like to provide my reassurances that there is no limit on the number of international students who can come to study in the UK, and no intention to impose one.”

Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP (UK Home Secretary)

With the impending exit of the UK from the European Union (Brexit) on 29 March 2019, it would be quite reasonable for international families considering British boarding schools to wonder what all this will mean for them. Will their child still be able to come to the UK? How long for? Will a visa be required?

September whizzed past in its usual whirl of back to school activity and one bit of English boarding school news that caught our eye was this: Prue Leith CBE DL visiting Truro School to officially open their new Cookery School.  As well as enabling practical cookery to be taught throughout the school, the new facility gives Sixth Form students the opportunity to complete the prestigious Leiths Introductory Certificate of Food and Wine, a professional cookery course designed to provide students with emp

August can seem a funny month in education. Some of the British boarding schools we work with are closed altogether, with just a skeleton staff in place to handle enquiries and, in some cases, host events, while others are abuzz with summer schools welcoming children from all over the world. At this point in the month, however, it starts to feel like business as usual, as the schools and, more to the point, their students brace themselves for exam results: A Level results are published on Thursday 16^th and (i)GCSE results come out on Thursday 23^rd.

To ensure we are up to date with the boarding schools we recommend, we subscribe to their newsletters. A link from Merchiston Castle School’s latest led us to a great resource for seeing where some of its international students come from and reading their stories. No matter where you are in the world, you’re likely to find the view of a child like yours, which might ease any concerns about whether they’d fit into a boarding school community here in the UK.

Young people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing are in the spotlight a great deal at the best of times, perhaps never more so than at this time of year while they are sitting exams. With boarding schools being in loco parentis, the onus is on them to ensure their students are supported to stay healthy in every way and we have recently heard from several how they do this.

Earlier this month Queen Margaret’s School received the Boarding Schools Association’s 2018 Boarding Innovation Award, in recognition of the ‘Community Weekends’ that were introduced last September.