Blog

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.

Culford School has recently announced a new Football Academy, which promises to combine a first-class education with a passion for football. Hoping to emulate the success of this English boarding school’s existing tennis and golf academies, this new initiative will be delivered in partnership with Ipswich Town Football Club, with academy pupils receiving individual development plans designed by the Director of Football, Alan Lee, a UEFA ‘A’ and FA Advanced Youth Licensed coach.

As spring gradually transforms into summer here in the UK, some of the British boarding schools we work with look to their own transformation during the long summer holiday, when they offer English language courses to short stay students.

These courses aren’t just an ideal way to give international students’ English language learning a boost; as the summer schools complement their academic offering with all the sports and other activities available on and around their campuses, this is the ideal “taster stay” for any child considering a longer placement in a British school.

The latest newsletter from Bede’s, a British boarding school in the south east of England, includes a feature about its diploma programme, which we thought would make an interesting addition to our blog.

The external qualifications offered in Bede’s Sixth Form are A Level, Pre-U and BTEC. Alongside studying for those exams, all pupils undertake a holistic enrichment programme, the Bede’s Diploma, which has four elements: Extend, Enrich, Enlighten and Enhance.

It is always hard to pick out one British boarding school’s news and achievements over the rest, but a recent update from Strathallan School in Scotland caught the eye for the sheer breadth of achievements in the spotlight; it really was a shining example of all that is great about British independent education.

Each year Warminster School, an English boarding school in Wiltshire, holds a Curriculum Enrichment Day (CED), which takes learning out of the classroom, crosses subject boundaries and combines the talents of students from years 7 to 13, as they work together within their House groups to solve a problem or create a product.