CSCI Boarding School Report Reveals Plus Points

Children and young people say that boarding school placements can be good for them if they need to live away from home, in a report published by the Office of the Children’s Rights Director yesterday. The report focuses primarily on the views of children and young people who live in boarding schools because they need to live away from home for a variety of reasons.

Placements at boarding schools can help with problems experienced at home and some of the advantages of boarding were recorded as: being with friends, learning to live with people even if they did not like them, and receiving constant educational and personal support.

However, among the disadvantages were: missing their family, in some cases staying at school at the weekends, loss of privacy, and missing the new friends they met when they had to leave.

They see boarding schools as a good addition to the range of placements available to choose from. Nevertheless, a boarding school has to be the right placement for the individual, and it matters to them which school is chosen.

It is particularly important how children and young people fit into the boarding community. They may be placed in boarding schools for a variety of reasons, but they state these become less important as time goes on and they become part of the school community.

Dr Roger Morgan, Children’s Rights Director, said: “The government is looking at whether boarding schools should be a possible placement for children who need to live away from home. I wanted to find out what young people already there thought. For them, it was a good placement, provided it had been properly chosen as the right placement for the individual. One young person summed up living in a boarding school by saying it was a homely atmosphere with extra learning.”

For further information on the views contained in the report, please visit www.rights4me.org