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.

In the 60s:

Dormitories generally not more than 6 girls, quite sparsely furnished - lino, iron bedsteads, each of us had a dressing table and there was a communal curtained-off bit for dresses etc. We were allowed to bring in our own eiderdowns/rugs and provided our own sheets. We were supposed to strip the beds every morning and make them after breakfast, but by the time we got to the equivalent of year 10 checking was cursory and we were much more slapdash about it. Early bedtimes - Year 7 was bed at 7.30, lights off at 8.15, increasing by 15 minutes each year till we reached the heady heights of the 6th form where it was bed at 10, lights off by 10.30. Up at 7, some sadist would come in and shout "Good morning" and turn on the lights, all supposed to be up and dressed by 7.30 for breakfast at 7.40. Baths every day on a rota which meant you couldn't realistically take more than 10 minutes. And it was sooooo cooooooold. Inefficient heating system, drafty oldish building. Our uniform included cloaks for use within the school grounds, in the winter we used to wear them indoors as much as we could get away with it and put them on our beds at night.

Half terms were a long weekend, Friday to Monday, except in the Spring term when they were one day (a Saturday). Otherwise we could have two outings a term with our families, which I think were something like 12 to 6.30. Later they went mad and allowed us to have one more afternoon a term.

Terribly gamesy - games sessions of an hour a day except Wednesdays and Sundays, though in the senior school we got to have Saturdays off as well; plus two gym sessions a week and a compulsory evening of Scottish dancing once a week in the junior section. And no luxuries like tights allowed for games even when it was freezing.

Lessons: mine was a small school so there was one class per year group of very mixed abilities. They tried to even things up by keeping pupils down a year if they were struggling, or initially putting them up into higher year groups. I arrived in what should have been Year 6, but was put into Year 8, and there were people in my year group over 3 years older.

The teaching varied a lot. There were some teachers who were really good and could command instant respect, some who were tolerated, some who were useless. We had a couple of very old school teachers and much of the class really struggled in their lessons. The games teacher was lazy and pretty incompetent.

We got to know teachers better once we reached the 6th form because there were much smaller classes - a lot of people left, particularly after the first year in the 6th form and there were only 6 taking A levels in my year. I think few were that interested in getting qualifications to take them on to universities or similar - those who left tended to go off to finishing schools or cooking/secretarial colleges. Teachers started treating us in a rather more grown-up way in the 6th form but, with hindsight, the reality was that their inexperience of teaching A levels showed.

Lessons were … lessons, not a lot to say really.
A lot of chalk & talk, discussions in relevant subjects.
Good practicals for science.
Some teachers more approachable than others, some downright scary (Physics A level teacher I'm looking at you!), but quality of teaching good. Definitely student-teacher relationship though - no pretending to be friends.
Art & PE mainly focussed on those with talent (DDs have had better teaching than I had in both).
I only had 2 male teachers, one for Chemistry and one for Art.
Textbooks handed down the generations, a large sticker inside the front cover where you wrote the year, name, house so you could see who had had the book before you.

@TeenTimesTwo were you at Wycombe? It all sounds very familiar

If you are setting in a boarding school, one essential to make it seem realistic would be the slang language for lots of things. Which I have blotted out of my memory, but it was definitely there.

And a lot of the boarding house 'discipline' being from the senior pupils rather than any adults.

Lessons: We were in ability-streamed classes up to age 12, then in the year coming up to O Levels we were in ability-based sets (1-7) for every subject. We would turn up with a heavy bag containing textbooks, exercise books and (from age 13) a calculator. Prep would be collected (and/or marked work handed out) at the beginning of the lesson.

Lessons were 45 mins each but chemistry & physics were often double lessons so that we could do experiments.

Teaching was done using an old-fashioned blackboard and chalk, with occasional use of an overhead projector.

Teachers were pretty strict and if you claimed to have left your prep “at the boarding house” you were sent to sprint back and collect it (awkward when you had forgotten to do it at all).

Utterly Yes. Now you have to work out the house from the description given.

OP Different houses could easily have quite different cultures / experiences. At my school there were 3 types of house and they would have run to different routines. Though obviously there would be quite a lot of general overlap too.

You could be 'de-housed' into a different house. To give you a new start and away from bad influences.
You could, apparently, also ask to be re-housed. One girl in my year turned up one term wearing a different house tie, and it transpired she had requested to be moved for some reason.

My DH went to one from the age of 7 until 16.

He is an only child. His father was in tbe RAF. The fees were sunsidised and his parents felt that it would give him stability and a good education that he wouldn't otherwise have had.

DH loved it and is still fixated with it so many years later. He's in his 40's and goes to reunions regularly despite living a 5 hour flight and a 4 hour drive away. He watches old videos, tells the same stories and looks at photos on a daily basis. I think its odd.

He went off the rails when he left because he didn"t know what to do with himself.

The place is no longer a school. It's a lovely and very historical building in the Quantocks. I have been there and stayed there and met the matron. We did a car boot sale with her selling everuthing she'd confiscated from the pupils over the years it was all very bizarre.

The place was cold and sinister to me. And a bit spooky.I call it Hogwarts and DH gets offended.

There are ex pupils accusing teachers of abuse. I don't doubt it. I think DH was damaged by it.

I was in one in the nineties. In the lower years you had to share a dormitory with 7 other people, decreasing to 4 bed, then 2 bed as you got older. By sixth form we had our own rooms.
There was definitely getting up to trouble - mainly tame things like smoking & drinking although some firms took it too far & had to get their stomach pumped. Funnily enough I'm just going through my old school files & found a letter the school had written to my parents about a girl caught with drugs who'd been intending to deal them.
Fair amount of eating disorders which I guess is to be expected in an all girls school & we had to sign in to meals so they could check we were going.
Relationships with teachers was professional & I would say respectful both ways. I think it did loosen up a little in 6th form - one of my teachers used to do group study sessions with G&T in 6th form & I remember drinking with teachers on the last night of a school trip abroad.

Sorry that was w bit of an essay!
Two non fiction books which might be helpful - Too Marvellous for Words & Terms & Conditions

Late 90’s early 2000

Co-Ed boarding school with very separate girls and boys houses.

Ate in house. Breakfast and dinner were canteen style queue and take a seat. Lunch was a formal sit down affair with seating plan (changed every term) and every table had a ‘guest’ space who you had to make polite conversation with - be it another teacher or a visiting parent or whoever.

Lots of great pastoral care. Very good setting.

Amazing historical buildings and beautiful, expansive grounds. Modern facilities.

Yes re PP comments about every second being timetabled. Lessons, sport, practice for the inter house (whole house) singing competition, art practice, prep, everything so busy all the time.

Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays were half days with sport after lunch.

Monday’s and fridays full day at school with a short sports practice after school if you wanted / were in a team.

Wednesday just had one period after lunch then it was CCF or community service.

Winter timetable in winter - on mon wed and Fridays you did your sport/ccf after lunch THEN Shad to get changed back into school clothes and go to school, finishing up at 6pm for tea.

Y9 and y10 in 4 bed dorms with a separate study room shares with different people. Sink in their room.

Y11 in 2 bed dorms with desks in the rooms and a sink.

Y12 and y13 in single rooms with desk and sink.

Nice toilets and showers, plenty of them.

Sixth form had to do their own washing, younger years had it done centrally. Everything labelled!

Food was good but stody. Very traditional English. Lots of it, never went hungry.

Had to be quiet in your room or study doing prep from 7-9. Patrolled by house tutors. Y9 has to do prep supervised in the dining room for their first 2 terms.

So much school specific terminology and slang. So. Much.

The ‘blue book’ was given to everyone and was the bible about what would happen that year re dates of holidays, school competitions, sports matches, plays, excursions. Dances, socials. Everything.

We could drink alcohol in 6th form. L6 could have 2x half a pint on Saturdays in the bar.

U6 could have 2x half a pint on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

At socials we were meant to be rationed but no one really cared and you could get quite drunk.

I’m sure some people were unhappy but I had the best time.

Every school has its own culture and it’s own pastoral regime. I think you need to have a think about what kind of school you are setting your novel in and go from there.

Chapel 3x a week Y9-y11 and twice a week y12 and y13.

Sunday chapel mandatory even for day pupils!!! Nightmare for them really.

Had to wear a smart suit for chapel.

Teen I'm actually not sure . The house mistress sounds like Nim, but the payphone seems like Marlow Hill... But we shared a physics teacher. And a chemistry master. Though by my time, we also had males in English and Latin, as well as Ricky the handyman

Fond memories of melting my suit to the back of my legs from standing too close to the fire. And Tuesday night lectures.

Actually, apart from periods of crippling boredom on some weekends in the first couple of years, I absolutely loved it. Though Malory Towers it wasn't!

I agree with the comment about including the correct lingo!
A lot I think may have been school specific but a few general essentials
Mufti (home clothes)
Prep (homework)
Tuck (sweets/junk food)
Exeat (weekend where no academic lessons or school shuts completely)
Supper (dinner)
Roll (Roll call)
Dorm (dormitory and dormie (room mate)

My DH went in the 80s and really liked it - his home life was not great (military family, hard drinking father) and he felt boarding school gave him a sense of stability he'd never had anywhere else and couldn't have gotten elsewhere. He went to his house master's funeral last year, 25 years after he left. He says there was bullying at his school but no abuse that he was aware of.

His main complaint was the awful food and the obsession with rugby above all else. He was one of their first team players and was allowed to get away with blue murder as long as he played but was pushed to play when he really should not have done, including once with concussion.

We weren't allowed to knock on the staff room door: you had to wait outside for a teacher going in or out, and then ask for who you wanted to see. It was carnage at break times.

We stood up when a teacher entered the room, and chorused a greeting. We also stood if the head came in, with or without visiting parents during lessons. Our relationship with teachers was very formal, and there was very little in the way of poor discipline etc - comparatively little mucking about in class etc. You had to raise your hand if you wished to "be excused" during class or in an exam - none of the MN "just tell your child to go"

No bullying that I'm aware of. During my whole time at the school there were no drugs or rumours of; smoking was a suspendadble offence (expelled if you were caught twice) - ditto drinking illicitly.

Socials with boys were highly sought after. Though we all somehow knew each other's business between houses - by the time we left, there were 3 or 4 of the year group who had lost their virginity.

Forms were loosely streamed, and then overtly streamed for English, Maths, modern languages and Latin. We were rarely uncertain of where we sat amongst our peers, in terms of results - English I remember particularly had the results read out to the whole year (alphabetical, though, not grade order). The biggest advantage in retrospect was that there was no danger of anyone suffering at university having been a little fish in a big pond.

We longed for the boats to come out on the lake in summer - they'd last around two days before being confiscated for the rest of term, owing to poor behaviour

Have to say I’m really sad that you’re not setting this today. Hasn’t everyone heard enough of the stereotypical boarding school story? It will be hard for you to avoid all that.

It would be wonderful to read such a novel that navigated present day realities.

(I have experience of both the past and the present - both good, but so different in so many ways.)

All girls boarding school - late 90s. If you spoke to girls in the older years without being addressed first, then you were considered "bumptious". There was a very strict hierarchy between the years and woe betide you if you were too slow to move from the sofa in the common room when an older girl came in.

You were specifically asking about the 6th form. In the lower 6th we shared two to a dorm, and by the upper 6th we had our own rooms. By the 6th form many people had grown out of the bitchiness of the previous years, or maybe you just learned who to avoid! One 6th form privilege was that you didn't have to wear school uniform any more - just a full-length skirt and tidy (ish) top. A level classes were small - most of mine were between 4-8 girls. The teachers were definitely more open with you when you were in the 6th form, but since many of them were women approaching retirement age (or at least it seemed that way - I'm amazed at how many of them are still there!), they were definitely not our friends!

On balance I didn't enjoy it but some of my best friends now are school friends - people I know I'll be friends with forever. It's a bonding experience, if nothing else!

@GeorgeTheBleeder I haven't decided what era to set it in yet. But I know the characters and the entire plot inside out. I guess, part of the point of this thread, was to be able to decide what Era my plot will stand up, most realistically, the best in.

I confess, having zero experience of boarding schools, I'd find it easier writing it, if it was set today, as I wasn't actually around in the decades I enquired about in my OP

I don't want it to be stereotypical but the plot isn't actually about the boarding school. The boarding school, itself, just enables the plot to be what it is, if that's where it is set.

Which is why I want a better understanding of boarding school life so, firstly, I can determine the best era and secondly, to be able to set the scene as realistically as possible.

Great thread - I'll recount later when I get back from work

@GeorgeTheBleeder Sorry, I forgot to add, I'd be really interested in hearing your experiences and how they differ between then and now!

OP, there’s a non-fiction book about life in girls’ boarding schools between the 30s and 1979 called Terms and Conditions which you might find useful:

www.amazon.co.uk/Terms-Conditions-Boarding-Schools-1939-1979/dp/0349143064/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?s=gateway&keywords=terms+and+conditions+life+in+girls+boarding+schools&sprefix=terms+and+condi&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1559136521&sr=8-1

Glad one of us enjoyed it Utterly . Didn't suit me at all, but I didn't realise I had an option to not be there iyswim? I think the scary physics teacher quite liked me as I was independent of mind, happily turning in homework showing that dynamos on bikes couldn't work (so of course I was wrong, but independently so).

OP Upper 6th were in a separate house/block. Actually a series of linked houses with their own kitchen & living room. Wore uniform but not ties. (The school was run by the lower 6th with head girl running from Jan-Dec so 1 term in the Upper 6th.) More freedom, could go into town at any time, not just Saturday mornings. We had food delivered but could make our own meals from it. eg I used to make bolognaise by mushing up beef-burgers. We were meant to be in our rooms by ?10:30pm but I don't think there was a 'lights out' as such. Rooms were singles and doubles. Some new girls did join for 6th form as other left to go to co-ed 6th forms at boys schools.

re teaching. I think there wasn't really much extra curricular at least on the science side. I think the school was a bit behind the times in that respect. e.g. When I turned up at uni a lot of the others seemed to know each other from maths Olympiads which our school never entered.

Maybe I was 'lucky' but my time at boarding school was great.

Staff were enthusiastic and invested and you got the impression they actually cared and wanted you to do well.

Classes were small and well ordered, curiosity and discussion were encouraged. Poor behaviour was pounced upon.

Facilities and equipment were excellent.

Outdoor pursuits as well as traditional sports were part of the curriculum.

Self reliance and a 'can do' attitude were instilled.

From ‪11 - 16‬ the school day was very structured (breakfast, assembly, lessons, break, lessons, lunch, lessons, break, lessons, dinner, prep, personal time, bed), from 6th form onwards way more leeway and independence was allowed and you could leave the school grounds, go to the pub, cinema, local sports match etc

Most schools have a house system with house masters/mistresses who strongly feature in the pastoral care of pupils. House prefects and school prefects help with discipline

I'm still good friends with dozens of my old school mates 25 years later.