A boarding school is a private school where the students, and sometimes teachers, live at the school. "Boarding" means that the school provides food and lodging. Students stay in residential halls or dormitories supervised by school staff or faculty members.
Children can start at a nursery boarding schools as early as two years old and continue living and going to a boarding school throughout high school. British children typically begin school at earlier ages than American kids. Time spent in a boarding school varies from only one year to more than twelve years.
Many boarding schools might feel like a college campus to some parents and visitors. Dormitories, dining halls, libraries, athletic facilities, classroom buildings and arts studios represent the physical plant of many boarding schools. Boarding schools cater to a wide variety of learning styles and students---anywhere from military to artsy.
College-preparatory boarding schools prepare students for college. They can be either all-male, all-female or coeducational. Military boarding schools prepare students for college and discipline students with a military structure. Preprofessional art schools focus on the arts in fields including music, ballet, visual arts and creative writing. Religious boarding schools are based around the practice of a particular religious faith.
Junior boarding schools work with students in grades eight and below. While some schools focus only on the junior boarding experience, others provide college preparation in addition to the younger grades.
Therapeutic boarding schools deal with students who have difficulty succeeding in traditional schools. Usually these schools address behavioral and emotional issues, in addition to substance abuse and learning problems. Therapeutic boarding schools are sometimes referred to as boarding schools for troubled teens.
Thoroughly check out any school promising to fix your troubled teen. Some boarding schools for troubled teens are not licensed or certified. If they're not experts in teen behavior, your child could become worse instead of better.
Boarding schools in Great Britain go back for centuries, but it wasn't until the early 1800s that the concept of living at school grew. Many upper-class Englishmen serving people stationed overseas with government and military roles wanted their children educated in England, resulting in more boarding schools.
At first, American boarding schools modeled their schools after British boarding schools. Founded in 1744, West Nottingham Academy in Maryland is the oldest U.S. boarding school. As in England, America's first boarding schools were basically populated by wealthy Caucasian males, besides children of faculty and clergy. Many boarding schools came from religious roots, such as the Moravian School for girls and Moravian Preparatory School for Boys, founded in Pennsylvania in the 1800s. Schools for Native Americans were also established, originally more for forced assimilation rather than education. However, in the early 20th century, the focus shifted back to local education. Since the 1990s, more boarding schools have emerged addressing the problems of struggling teens, as well as specialty schools helping kids with challenges in their homes and communities.