The REAL Benefits of Boarding

From corridor cricket to chosen family, on International Boarding Day, LWC’s Deputy Head (Pastoral), Ali Cocksworth reflects on why children want to bed down in a boarding house and what makes the lessons learned more important than ever.

“Mummy…where will all the girls sleep?”

This was the first question my then three-year-old asked upon viewing what was to be his first home outside of a boarding house. I gently explained that my new job didn’t involve being in loco parentis for seventy-six teenage girls. My daughter, then not quite six, sighed and commented that, “Our old house was such luxury, mummy… all those girls to play with…” I confess to being taken aback by my own children’s affection for a life that we were then preparing to set aside,  but that said, they weren’t wrong: Houseparenting is the best job in boarding and three years down the line, I still miss it.

I write this not only as a ‘recovering’ housemistress, but having grown up in boarding houses watching my mum deliver a masterclass in the art of houseparenting. Even in the wilds of the nineties and noughties, the best of boarding school life was a far cry from the haunting stereotype of the child shipped off with a kiss and a trunk full of tuck for weeks at a time. Children now often actively want to board – I frequently meet with prospective parents being insistently lobbied on this point – and this is even more true as schools embrace greater flexibility and respond to the demands of modern family life.

As we mark International Boarding Day, it feels pertinent to reflect on what makes boarding such a powerfully positive experience – beyond the very specific smell of burnt toast and games of corridor cricket. Corridor cricket was, I understand, integral to life at LWC’s Summerfield House back in the early 2000s. It’s a core memory that my Sternian husband and godfathers to our two older children share of their school days. The two gentlemen in question are very much what Kamala Harris once referred to as “family not by blood, but by love,” – members of our chosen family whose friendship was first forged in boarding. This is at the heart of boarding life, a sense of unavoidable community. This is a space where belonging is a by-product of living together, of shared experience. Brothers and sisters you find through your boarding house, even (and sometimes especially), where you might not be expecting them.

Often, we associate the benefits of boarding with practical skills and yes, the boarding environment does build independence and resilience within a safe framework. There is, though, something more profound at work in boarding houses than learning to manage homework without a parental beady eye. Living together, that messy day-to-day reality of negotiating other people’s needs (and stuff!), builds empathy at a time when much of a young person’s world can seem geared against it. Breakfast with different people, navigating bathroom schedules, negotiating music tastes. This daily texture of boarding life requires the capacity to see things from a different perspective. It builds compromise and consideration into the fabric of the day, taking concepts of ‘kindness’ and ‘inclusivity’ out of PSHEE and weaving them into lived experience.

The hidden curriculum of boarding life matters now more than ever; the uncurated, unfiltered reality of a roommate who likes to read late into the night, or the noisy neighbour who lets their door slam as they head for their 6am shower, builds the skills necessary to navigate real life. They learn to talk, to negotiate, to apologise in a way that the ever-divisive algorithm works to condition them against. It’s in these moments of meaningful connection that character is truly formed: pupils learn what it really means to live together, not always in perfect harmony but comfortable in their difference.

Learn more about boarding at LWC here.