Boarding School realities

[Historicalroad]

Just wondering if anyone who attended Boarding Schools between the 60s and 90s would be willing to share their experiences?

So as to not drip feed, I'm attempting, though failing miserably so far, to write a novel. Purely fictional. I have my characters and a storyline but it works best set in a boarding school.

I've never stepped foot inside a boarding school. I've no idea what they're like but I want to keep it as realistic as possible. I've trawled the internet to try and get an insight into what life is like at boarding schools but I'm struggling. I don't think the plot would fair as well if it was set today, hence why I'm looking at some time between the 60s and the 90s.

I don't know if it's already been mentioned, but there's a brilliant book called Terms and Conditions, published a few years ago, about experiences of girls' boarding schools from the 30s to the 70s IIRC. Very funny, very sad too.

What’s the author of the book?

I was a day girl in the junior department of an all girls boarding school in the mid 80s, Dad was Head of Music. I remember my boarder friends were allowed to bring their favourite bedding to remind them of home, and that the worst “job” any of us had was to walk the Headmistress’ dogs round the field. Turned out one of them hated grass...

There was an Army training centre backing onto the school grounds, so rumours abounded of girls trying to climb over the back wall...!

GeorgeTheBleeder: Indeed it may have changed from the gulags my generation went to. I would still close every single residential school, flog a randomly selected member of staff on general principles, and refer all the parents for a full depth social services investigation. Because the little boy crying in the woods, wearing clothes unwashed for a month is still part of who I am.

With you there Disgrace....and i cried in the woods too ..52 years on it still trips me up.

It's not true that all boarders now go home every 2 or 3 weeks. Lots stay at school for the full half term.

Our teachers were on constant watch for vomiting which was supposed to be anorexia. In fact the tame girls ate raw frozen peas (bought at the Co-Op by the day girls) to give themselves the shits. The hard girls just abused over-the-counter laxatives. The loos were the only private time we had, and we used to hang out together just chatting quite happily.

One weird form of bullying was for an older girl or a very charismatic girl to take you under her wing. You’d be immensely flattered to be her ‘chosen one’ and hang onto her every word, do her chores, break rules for her, basically become her dogsbody. Then she’d grow bored of you, encourage other girls to laugh at you, and eventually exclude you from the friendship group. I didn’t even realise this was a form of bullying (thought the experience was unique to me and was humiliated by the fact I’d allowed it to happen to me TWICE) until years later some friends of mine - also boarders but at different schools - fessed up to exactly the same thing.

I think it's a leetle bit disingenuous to suggest the boarding schools now aren't stuffed full of the privileged.

Sure, the children of Russian oligarchs may have replaced the blonde English Rose from Kensington, and you may get one child per form whose parents can't afford a second skiing holiday (excluding services etc) but please let's not kid ourselves they are bastions of diversity.

Dobby it's by Ysenda Graham.

It varies a lot I think. Some children I know are on full or near full bursaries and come from genuinely low income families.

It varies with the international students too - some Asian countries provided full scholarships to pupils from each region, so some had never seen their own capital city before the group had a month going around the UK and were scattered among 20 schools. My school have a couple all-expenses paid scholarships and keep trying to hit me up for more money - they go to refugees, you know. Can't help thinking how much more good that fund would do for my kids' state school which is about 5% refugees.

Also had delicate situations where parents of girls were senior in corrupt government, or oligarchs, and turned out to have ordered the jailing or execution of other girls' families. Not to mention politicians weighing in on different sides of wars. I remember the junior hiusemistress trying to sound calm at start of term announcements, with 'and Thingy isn't back yet, because she and her family are being held hostage in a hotel in X, but they hope she'll be back with us soon' - she came back a couple weeks later.

I was an international student (India) and it was a massive culture shock even in the mid-late 1980s. I actually can’t recall any racism but definitely found myself an outsider. Came at the wrong time of year (because the terms are different) and found the slang impenetrable. I was top of the class pretty quickly with very little effort which irked a lot of people - the teaching and discipline at my Indian school was phenomenal, looking back - but English schoolgirls were very anti-authority, constantly cheeking the teachers who to my horror seemed to favour them more as a result! Also I had done no sport other than cricket (not played by English girls apparently ) and despite being 14 I couldn’t swim. So never picked for any teams and still tortured every Wednesday afternoon.

A Malaysian girl came and caused a sensation because the strict school uniform was adaptedto allow her to wear trousers. No hijab though.

Everyone-teachers and pupils alike- smoked and swore, and alcoholic miniatures were a crypto currency.

There is something about boarding that makes it a parallel universe. People reminiscing about rar-ra skirts, Duran Duran, Madonna etc - can never join in with those conversations as we literally weren’t aware they existed. We knew about Kylie and Jason though, because we all huddled around a tiny telly to watch Neighbours after tea every day.

I went to two different ones. they were very different in expectation and character.
I switched at age 13 to a big name famous school, nearer home, but really for the higher academic standard.

So, aged 9-13 in smaller friendlier one, all girls, 1977- 1980:
small boarding houses.
mixed age small dorms, of about 3-5 girls, so like sharing a room with your sister.
small houses meant it was similar to a 'home' so living room with TV, kitchen with kettle so you can make hot choc. yourself.
Rota for showers, one every other day.
We did all our own washing by hand in the laundry in the basement, except sheets. Each week sheets were changed and sent off.
Homework sessions after school in main school building, so when you came back to house it was all done, everyone had to go, so you sat and read if you had no homework.
really friendly caring atmosphere.
most boarders were there for a reason, parents in forces, or working overseas, which really helped.
Large gardens, tennis courts and a pretty free reign to go out and play.
Allowed 'into town' in pairs on Saturday as we liked.

school 2, large famous school, much larger overall and most girls boarded. Age 13-18 (I was a day girl in sixth form though) 1980-1985

• houses much bigger eg 60 girls.

-dorms split according to year group, so you were in the first years dorms, all together/interconnected, and you had a year group common room. This was awful, in that in meant if you struggled with kids during the day, you got them in the evening as well. -Common rooms had privileges. So a radio/record player was 2nd year and above, and kettle was only allowed in fourth year etc.

• evening homework session in the boarding house in a large 'library' at the back, everyone there, silence, you read if no work to do.
• no TV, except on sat and one weekday evening. We voted, and it was always Thursday for top of the pops. When Fame was on, we changed days to wed as it was so popular!
• lots of 'Enid Blyton' style bits and pieces. we planned midnight feasts and late night tricks on staff/other girls. Every year we would produce some rubbish musical for the rest of the house/staff/parents
• lots of unhappy girls who didn't know why they were there.
• only allowed into town on Saturdays in groups of 4, in full uniform, with strict rule (no eating in streets) not every saturday, there was a rota as to which was our houses turn
• very strong house rivalry
• saturday morning school - no lessons, mostly to get us out of the boarding house I think.
• church every Sunday, in special Sunday uniforms, which fortunately included a cloak, so you could hide a book under it and read through the sermon.

house staff across both schools on the whole kindly and did their best, some nicer than others.
No parties or socialising. Drink and drugs were expellable offences, no smoking either.
Sixth forms separate at both schools.

Very strict on behaviour, manners, respect, uniform rule etc.

whoops, sorry, bit long

I went 1997-2002. I wonder if the same school as @otter46 because our punishments were sinbin, also ponycare and being gated, and prep was supervised by sixth formers etc. My house mistress was extremely slack, shy, and not a disciplinarian so it was easy to get up to mischief, but I don't think it was as easy in the other houses. We were allowed one alcoholic drink at 'socials' (disco with the local boys school) from about age 14, but those that didn't drink would give you their drink tokens, and it was easy to smuggle alcohol out the home economics room the day of a social. There was a smokers corner on the netball courts that was mostly ignored, I was one of the very few who smoked though.

I had a very unhappy time at boarding school, and certainly suffered the effects of BSS (boarding school syndrome) for a long period afterwards. I wasn't from a wealthy family.

We were not allowed to play cards or listen to 'pop' music on Sundays. We could listen to classical or musicals though. There weren't many records so we used to play the sound track from Oklahoma! time after time. I still know all the songs by heart.
We were allowed to watch the last 10 minutes of top of the pops, evening prayers finished at around 7.45. Also Kenneth Clarke's 'Civilisation', as it was considered improving. TV viewing was later expanded to include Dr Findlays Casebook on Sunday evenings, for some reason, but that was it.
I have contributed several times to this thread, and find other people's experiences fascinating. However, it has made me realise that I still carry so much baggage from that time in my life. Public school may have educated me, but it damaged me emotionally, and adding my contributions to this thread has brought the unhappiness and anger I felt at the time back to the fore.
Perhaps it's time for some therapy!

Anyone seeking support might want to join Boarding School Survivors on Facebook.

Please be aware that even in the late 70s ‘full boarding’ meant children went home maybe every two or three weeks.

hmm, no it really didn't.

so, 3 weeks into term there was an exeat weekend, where you could gte someone to come and take you out for tea etc. Only about 1/10 kids had someone living close enough to do that.
Then half term. For kids whose parents were overseas, that was spent with relatives or friends.
Then another exeat weekend 3 weeks after half term.

Most of us saw our parents at half term, or not until the next holidays.
I went aged 9. I saw my parents at Christmas, Easter and then summer holidays.

can I also say, that while I totally believe all the reports of abuse etc, some schools, including ours, did have high standards and worked hard to keep bullying etc down.
I was having a hard time, and I remember my house mistress, not the warmest, or most motherly of people, being really good, and quite crafty at finding solutions that didn't look as if she was intervening.

Most of our house staff were good people.

The biggest thing I would say is that boarding life and school life were quite separate. We had a boarding house, with a whole life there. Then we walked down the road to school, where we mixed with all those from the other houses (about 6 I think) and all the day girls, and that was a completely separate experience.

Our School trunks!
Anyone still got theirs? Mine's been used over the years(it's red) as I've moved about, now currently in my garage full of 'stuff' from my last move I still haven't found a place for. And photograph albums. We had two princesses in our year, and boy did they become competitive when they were allowed to wear their national dress The Polish one won hands down, as hers was covered with teeny tiny cross stitch.
But it got me thinking about my tuck box. Ds now has it and used it for his goodies when he went to Uni and still has it, but what kept me awake last night was....where was this kept? Our big trunks were taken into storage, but our little tuck boxes? Just can't remember...I'd imagine most BS's were run on similar lines, can anyone jog my memory?
OP I hope you can capture the busyness of the trains arriving,the porters loading our labelled trunks onto the train, us being shepherded into reserved carriages (christ it sounds like kids being sent off to a Gulag ) but it was a scary yet exciting time for me.
Food - anyone else from overseas experience the Culture Shock that was your first introduction to English school food?

yes, still got my trunk. They went into the trunk store in the cellar.

we didn't have tuck boxes, we had lockers in our common rooms, and we kept our tuck in our lockers.
No locks or keys, but almost never had anything nicked. I think the culprit would have been found too easily and then shamed.

Perhaps it was user27495824, as there are few boarding schools with their own stables on site. It’s now become the prep part of a reasonably famous school in the north west, once boys only but now do-Ed.

My trunk was red. At the start and end of every term we had to 'do trunks' where we formed a human chain and put all the empty trunks in the basement (or out at the end of term).
It came with me to university (thinking about it, probably really easy to tell who had been to boarding school by who turned up with a trunk), and in my first year made a useful table.
I don't have it, might be in my parents' loft - must ask them.

Even in 2000 we weren't allowed to weekly board, there were many pupils that didn't go home for exeat weekends, and even on the holidays that school was closed lots went to a 'guardian' which was basically temporary foster care. I'm sure going to a guardian was nicer than school, but it's still not home and must have been very hard. I remember one pupil from America who used to beg for anyone to let her tag along on exeats. Very sad.