Studying Away From Home: Boarding Schools

Whether it’s a necessity or an option, studying at a boarding school presents a plethora of benefits for students as it promotes independence and survival skills like no other form of schooling can.

If you are contemplating on sending your child to a boarding school, it can be considered the first step in securing an exceptional educational experience for your child. Boarding schools are after all where learning, personal growth and exploration are top priority and where enriching programs and activities are abundant. Boarding schools are also where meaningful, life-long friendships are made. For students attending boarding school, the many benefits that come with it are felt throughout their lives.

Controlled freedom

Independence is something parents yearn to give their children yet they find it so difficult to do so! For various reasons, parents are hyper-vigilant and feel that they need to be involved in every aspect of their child’s life. A boarding school could be the perfect solution!

At boarding schools, children are required to navigate through their days under situations of controlled freedom. They are required to get up at a certain time, get certain chores done, manage their time between classes and so on and so forth. They learn to do all these without being prompted a hundred and one times by their parents. It’s one of the best places on earth to learn to be disciplined, organised and independent.

By the time boarding school graduates enter college, they’re prepared to succeed, with the ability to manage their own lives. These are students who are bound to become strong individuals capable of leadership for they posses self-initiative. Our modern state of our culture has somehow made it challenging to cultivate important leadership traits and boarding schools are actually timely solutions. A student who is dropped off at school in the morning and then picked up from school by a parent after school does get the same opportunity to develop peer skills as the one who lives in the campus with other students 24/7. Students don’t just have to manage their own affairs, they learn how to live and deal with other people and are challenged to develop their interpersonal skills too.

A thirst for exploration

Boarding school allows students to learn lessons of other cultures and indirectly plant the interest in travels. Just being exposed to that diversity plants deep interest to know what’s it really like living in the place where their friends from other countries live.

The sense of community and personal growth

One of the things boarding school students recall with appreciation about boarding school was the community atmosphere created within the school dynamic. The dorm life and all its adventures bonds students of different ages and cultures. While academics are just as important to their lives, when ex-students get together as adults later on in life, it’s not the classroom life they remember with great fondness, but the dorm life, or other memorable moments.

Simply better academic opportunities

Boarding school offers the opportunity for students to foster intense connections with their teachers, in part due to smaller, more intimate class sizes.

The outlook of teachers at boarding schools regarding their position isn’t that of a job, but more of a vocation, where they become an important role model in each of their students’ lives. Teachers work with students, share meals and often live on campus, making it a difficult environment to duplicate anywhere else.

Preparation for the working life

While the education gained in any school is important to personal and educational growth and development, life in a boarding school however also acts as a pre-cursor to life after school. The move to post-secondary education can be a difficult transition for many. Being away from the support system of family and long-time friends and the challenges of becoming acquainted with a new place and style of learning can bear a heavy burden. In comparison, the burden for students graduating from boarding schools, while still apparent, is seemingly far less cumbersome than it is for graduates from other schools. Research has shown that boarding school students not only feel more prepared for college and university than their peers, they are more likely to earn more advanced degrees like a Master’s or PhD, and advance to more prominent roles in their careers and communities.