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'm hoping that the ex's version is a very rare outlier from the late 80s/90s, @batvixen. Or utter bullshit.

I have friends who went to boarding school then and the thing I notice most about them is how tactile they are. They have no sense of personal space. They burrow right up against you on sofas, loll on your bed with their heads on your legs like puppies. And they hate sleeping alone. They all used to climb into each other's beds for cuddles. Nothing sexual in it - just like a bunch of puppies. That really surprised me. I'm from a state day school and like more space than that.

OP. One thing that is really weird looking back is how completely separate the houses were.

I only went up the hill to where 3 of the houses were about twice in 5 years. I never saw the house study (common room) of the two houses in the main site or their dorms. We just didn't mix with them. I can't remember whether going in to other houses was banned or whether just wasn't the done thing.

Fire practices at night - either just after lights out or just before the getting up gong. We never did work out how the house we were adjacent to always got out first.

I declined to tell my parents of the free places available at the local boys' school which had boarders. On the grounds of it being a rugby playing school and Saturday morning classes.

From what I have since heard about boarding school and the experience of my uncle (an alcoholic by 30), I am glad I did not go anywhere near one.

But I have just googled the school. There have been several prosecutions of staff for physical and sexual abuse. I can imagine that student-student abuse wasn't that carefully policed when the adults in charge weren't fit to care for them.

OP as at any school any two pupils might have very different experiences depending on the house they’re in or their particular cohort of friends. It’s just that any problem - personality clash, competitiveness, jealousy, bullying, is magnified because you’re together 24 hrs a day.

Obviously a story based on dorms or shared rooms will be different to one set in a school where everyone has their own room.

And is it full or weekly boarding? Please be aware that even in the late 70s ‘full boarding’ meant children went home maybe every two or three weeks. Or to relatives or a guardian if their parents really were too far away. It wasn’t the 19th century!

I weekly boarded in the late 90s for sixth form. It was a boys school that took girls in the sixth form only. Maybe 60% day pupils with the rest of us going home Saturday afternoon until Sunday evening.

Lessons were very high quality from subject experts (so relevant degrees for the most part). If the teachers weren’t clever we ran rings round them and were too immature to see how cruel it was.

Relationships with teachers could verge on chummy in a way that would be seen as inappropriate now. I was bored and did an AS ‘on the side’ which meant a handful of 1-1 lessons in the teacher’s study. His wife was around but I don’t think I ever saw her. Never a smidge of anything inappropriate happened to me (or anyone else I was aware of). Lots of extra academic and non-academic stuff going on all over the shop.

I was immensely happy once I’d got over a few weeks of homesickness during the week. Made lots of friends (boys and girls) whom I’m still in contact with even though we’re geographically spread out now.

on student teacher relations, fucking loads of girls were sleeping with staff at my school, if it helps. mid eighties to early nineties.

I also remember...
Sunday/Founders Day uniform for the boarders. A scratchy wool dress with detachable collars. Day girls wore their usual uniform on Founder's Day with the addition of a school hat (the only time we were required to wear it)
Grace was said before meals --in Latin.
Assemblies were held for the whole school every day and the head wore their university gown and hood.

@VoteJadot oh! Was it common knowledge amongst other staff and students?

Safeguarding at boarding schools a generation or more ago seems to be purely down to luck. There wasn't anyone independent. This was pre-childline.

We had 2 'school doctors'. Both middle-aged+ men.
Figure that for care for 11-18yo girls!

@historicalroad Ds's boarding school was lovely and he made many good friends. Not sure that will be helpful , but true.

Reading through all your comments now with utter fascination. So interesting and helpful!

@teentimestwo
I underwent a MORTIFYING procedure with one of them with a matron (or was there some head nurse woman at the hospice?) standing in to check there was nothing untoward going on

yep, it was basically common knowledge. lots of bullying too, I certaily recognise MitziK's husband's experience. I wonder if it was the same place. and full boarders had an afternoon with parents once a month or so, if they came.

@TeenTimesTwo That's why I was thinking about setting it during the late 80s or 90s.

Safeguarding is so important now and everything is far stricter in that sense. I fear the story would seem slightly unrealistic in today's time due to high standards of safeguarding. (Which isn't a bad thing, of course, just doesn't quite fit with the story)

the children's act made all the difference in terms of safeguarding. that was in 1989.

School was very (98%+) 'white British', even if they lived abroad.
Not ethnically diverse. But I wasn't aware of anyone bullying/picking on the few that weren't.

These days the same school has loads of Chinese (? not sure haven't followed closely) girls.

I went to public school in 1967 when I was 12. It was very strict. There were lots of times when we had to be silent, like before breakfast, after supper before we had prayers, an hour after lunch etc. We seemed to spend an awful lot of time praying (it was C of E), which, as I was already an atheist, didn't sit well with me.
Our house mistress smoked like a chimney. The older girls used to be sent to the shops to buy her fags. The staff room was always wreathed in smoke which used to billow out when the door was opened, but staff didn't smoke in the classroom.
My aunt had gone to the same school during the war, but I still had some of the same teachers as her. There were a lot of (very old) retainers.
I don't remember being cold. We had a coal fire in our study and the maids would keep it loaded with coal. The older girls used to snaffle the best seats next to the fire.
We had cubicles, so you had your own little space for your bed etc - they were fine, although a bit like large lavatories, with gaps at the top and bottom of the dividers. There were very few shared rooms.
We were kept busy all the time, with sport nearly every day, along with gym and ballroom dancing. We had lessons in the a.m. then after lunch hockey or lacrosse, then back into class from 4.40 till 7pm, then supper, prayers and then bed. Slightly different in the summer term.
I hated and detested this school. It has scarred me for life and I still, at 64, have nightmares about it. I left at 16 and went to a local (day) grammar school to do A levels. That was much more my kind of thing.

oh and our geography teacher smoked in class.

Just reading some comments I missed - the bloody uniform, I'd forgotten about it! The only supplier was Peter Jones in Sloane square. We had to buy everything on the list and it was all ghastly shades of green and brown. There was something on the list called 'liners', my mother didn't know what these were. When the assistant brought them to the counter they were massive big cotton KNICKERS that were so voluminous you could pull them almost up to your chest, and they were really, really thick. There was no way you could give them a quick rinse if you need to, they took days to dry.

@Historicalroad - Ds's school was excellent re safeguarding. - not sure that will help with novel but the reality with mid 2000s early decades. Can only speak of one school but anything other than that would sound unrealistic.

I was at a girls boarding school late 80’s-early 90’s.
It wasn’t an experience I’d choose to repeat. It was very very lonely and no one really cared about you. You had to be independent and resilient. Bullying was horrendous. Dorms were like Florence nightingale wards. 15-20 per dorm. Cast iron beds up both sides of the dorm. Thin mattresses with the springs jabbing you in the night. Wooden floorboards. No privacy at all. No comfort or luxury. We had four dorms per floor of the boarding house. Only 3 loos and 4 baths for all of us. Needless to say we didn’t wash much.

School was separate from the house life. Day girls were envied and also separate from us, day bugs we called them.

The house mistress wasn’t kind or motherly. She was strict and handed out punishment. In the senior house the house mistress was like Mrs Trunchball. Prior to that we had an alcoholic house mistress who was intoxicated by prep time and lay in the corridor unconscious.

Safeguarding wasn’t really a thing, nor was the mental well-being of the pupils. It was bloody awful really.

We had loads of punishment handed out constantly. The dorms were cold and uncomfortable places. Eating disorders were rife. The school food was awful. Cheap and nasty. Corned beef hash was a delight they served us. Yuck. We lived on pot noodles and toast in the common rooms.

All the staff were female, single and bitter. We had to look after ourselves because there wasn’t anyone looking after us. We weren’t allowed to leave school. In the winter we had to be inside at dusk. Summer was better as we could stay outside in the afternoon. We didn’t have much free time. The day was as follows

7.20 1st bell
7.30 2nd bell
8.00 breakfast
8.30 dorm inspection.
9.00 - 4pm School
5.30 supper
7-9 prep (homework) in silence in the dining hall
10.30 lights out.

OP the "school story" has been a popular fiction genre since time immemorial. Like What Katy Did Next, Mallory Towers and latterly Harry Potter. All of them idealise the boarding school experience to some degree. I'm interested to know if you are going for a romantic/light-hearted view or a no-holds one? I didn't go to boarding school myself, but the stories I've heard in real life greatly contrast with everything I've ever read in fiction. I'd be really interested if you're going for realism.

@LittleAndOften it certainly won't be romantic or light hearted and I'd like to keep it as realistic as possible. It's fiction, of course, and in some places it may be quite dark or dramatic but I'd hope to try and maintain the realism even with that.