Campaign urges boarding schools to stop taking young children

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/10/campaign-boarding-schools-young-children

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A group of campaigners, clinicians and academics are calling for boarding schools to stop accepting young children, claiming that boarding is mentally damaging and the product of an outdated class system.

In a letter to Sunday's Observer, more than 25 signatories – including psychoanalyst Dr Susie Orbach, Labour MP Barry Sheerman, writer AL Kennedy and film-maker Don Boyd – say boarding is detrimental to children's wellbeing and a "British habit" that can lead to emotional deprivation.

Boarding schools are proving increasingly popular with UK parents and the number of boarders has been slowly rising year on year, even throughout the recession, while other independent schools have seen their numbers fall slightly. Some 69,000 pupils currently have boarding places at independent schools, which on average cost £25,000 a year. There are also 5,000 children at England's state boarding schools.

A number of psychiatrists and former boarders believe the practice is institutionalising children and leaving them damaged by being denied a loving home.

"I'm completely horrified at the idea of sending children to these places," said Sally Fraser of Boarding School Action, who helped organise the letter. "My husband is a boarding school survivor and when you see the impact of this world on people like him, it's horrendous. I knew he had issues and I started to look into it and found out that there was something called boarding school syndrome.

"Especially now that we have young children, it really strikes a chord. It's this attitude that children have to be rushed through to adulthood. The parents think they are doing the right thing and think the children are coping, when in fact the kids are just kept incredibly busy so they don't feel sad.

"It's an adapt-and-survive environment. It's seen as awful that we have to have kids in care, but we are happily allowing this to go on, just to a different socioeconomic group."

The letter comes after an article in last week's Observer Magazine by journalist Alex Renton about abuse and neglect and the "no-hugs" culture in boarding schools, which provoked a large response. Ray McGovern, chairman of the Boarding Schools Association – which is holding its annual conference in Glasgow on Monday – said that he had enormous sympathy with any adult who had had a dreadful experience as a boarder, but that today's schools were very different to those of the past.

"Children are not being 'sent away'; they are going to enjoy an education, opportunities and facilities second to none" because their parents want the best for them, said McGovern, who is also headmaster of St George's in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, one of only 37 state boarding schools in England.

"Even a seven-year-old going into a boarding environment can be enriched by it," he said.

"Nowadays children are part of the decision-making to go to a boarding school, and schools will make sure the child's wishes are being taken into account before they admit them, as well as making sure they have the resilience to cope with the boarding environment. Any parent who comes in saying their child needs a bit of 'toughening up' will have it explained to them that that is not what boarding is all about."

McGovern admitted some parents were criticised for sending their children to boarding schools. "I wouldn't say it's a taboo, but certainly some people will be cautious about who and when they might engage in a conversation with about it. But then a lot of parents are quite proud of it; it's seen as status-enhancing that they can afford it.

"The numbers of international boarders, from Chinese or Russian families, is going down a little; it's mainly the British sector going up. The biggest restraining factor is cost, and if more parents could afford it they would.

"There is a big growth in flexi-boarding: very few children at a young age are sent to boarding school and don't go home from the start of one end of term to the end. Many will have weekends with mum and dad – and of course [they have] mobile phones. Communications between parent and child are far better than they ever were."

But to many psychologists and psychiatrists, concerns remain. They point to "attachment theory" – pioneered by British child psychiatrist John Bowlby, who was opposed to early boarding – and to the experiences of some clinicians and neuroscientists, which suggest that children can be permanently hurt by a lack of warmth and a secure home.

Dr Andrew Samuels, a psychotherapist at Essex University, said: "It's not just a historical experience. Boarding schools are disruptive to family relationships. Children learn that sense of having to pull themselves together and be happy boarders; otherwise, of course, there would be outbreaks of hysteria.

"They can't understand despair or empathise with others as adults because that just wasn't on the menu for them as children."