How do boarding schools make sure pupils sleep

[Jannie65]

Hi
looking for some insight into how boarding schools make sure pupils go to bed at night. What’s to stop them pulling all nighters and keeping back laptops to watch tv all night?

from experience going to one - boarding school timetables are so full on that you start to get really really tired and start self regulating when you go to sleep. The sneaking into different rooms etc is usually found out by whichever staff member is on duty, and usually punished if it’s getting beyond silly. Ultimately you can’t control how much the school intervenes, and the staying up and chatting with roommates is vital for social & emotional well-being. It’s what makes it all so fun! Otherwise being sent away from home for school is a pretty miserable thing. If others in dorm are keeping you up you have to learn to negotiate that which is good for relational skills. Noise cancelling headphones/earplugs can really help. But basically OP you need to release control. You’ve sent them away so you can’t parent quite in the same way you might want to at home.

I was at boarding school many years go. age 9, we had to be in bed before East Enders started because the matron wanted to watch it on TV. if you got out of be to chatter or visit the next door dorm (via the fire exits) etc and you were caught, you had to sit on the cold landing for 30 mins with less sleep. but we still did it.

in secondary school, there was a fixed lights-out time and we mostly chattered after lights-out and then slept. occasionally people would creep out to talk, and once there was a party to 2am in the classrooms downstairs but mostly people were tired enough to sleep.

We were too tired from school activities and miserable being sent to boarding school to stay up all night. Sleep was a way of escaping from our situation. I can't remember ever being awake all night. There used to be a lot of crying.
Mind you this was the 1970s. It's probably better now. In those days being sent up a chimney wouldn't have surprised me.

this was normal when i was in BS, i doubt it has changed. i was exhausted pretty much all the time there but i think that’s more because we weren’t ever able to get an early night when unwell or have a lie-in at the weekends.

Anyway, the way to handle it is to approach the housemistress and say “Look, this is happening and these specific girls are involved. My dd is concerned about making a fuss in case it comes back on her and she gets backlash. Can you try to catch them in the act after lights out and implement some sort of punishment, without them realising it’s DD who has complained?”

That being said, I think it’s a bit rich to enrol a child at boarding school and then complain they aren’t getting enough sleep. What did you expect from sharing rooms?

But that’s exactly why I’m asking if it’s normal as I can see it would be hard to enforce.

I went to Boarding school years ago before mobile phones and laptops were a thing.... But we all had game consoles - think sega game gear or Nintendo game boy. In my experience if we played on those under our duvets or read a book by torch light no one really noticed. If they did catch us the item would be confiscated for increasing lengths of time.

The noise, talking and sneaking around were such fun and some of my best childhood memories are from messing around after lights out and trying hard not to get caught. As we got older dorms had fewer and fewer people in each one and we were less inclined to muck about. Probably too tired.

House mistresses' rooms were in v close proximity to bedrooms and they usually went to their own rooms around 10pm, after which you couldn't speak anything above a whisper without them hearing. Those people have hearing like you would not believe! They used to patrol the corridors and occasionally pop their heads in to check if we were in bed. Naughtier or more disruptive kids were often relocated to individual rooms for a night or 2 as punishment. Those rooms were right next door to the staff room so you had absolutely no chance of silliness and fun! (I spent a lot of time being relocated-whoops)

If you're really worried speak to the house mistresses, they might relocate the kids for a few nights or figure out something equally boring to help dissuade the kids from their antics. But in my experience it definitely calms down after the initial few days of excitement!

I think most of them have second phones. Sometimes the older years have a phone rental system for the younger years. As your child is Year 9 you could complain to the house master/mistress as they are still young (and only complain about your own child, not name anyone else) , but it should definitely be on a confidential basis as it probably wouldn't be good for your child's social life otherwise. Having said that, I'd leave it. It's for the school to enforce the rules.

We had to hand phones and laptops in until year 11. Some people had second phones but no one would have a second laptop. The WiFi would turn off at 10 I think regardless of age including sixth form unless it was the weekend. Matrons would walk round the corridors until 10 checking it was quiet and the year 9s would’ve been in bed by 9:30 from memory. Generally there was some chatting after lights out but not huge amounts. If we were caught in each others rooms after lights out it would be pretty harsh punishments like having to go to bed half an hour early with a matron sat in the room and an electronics ban after school. When some of the year 7s were continually misbehaving after lights out (more than just whispering) then they did a room swap putting them each in rooms with older girls for a week and that was pretty effective. I do think you need to let go though. My mum had no idea what I got up to at schooL. You chose the school because yiu Thought they would be the best for your Son so you need to trust them.

My experience was late 90s/early 00s so no smartphones & only basic computers. We were generally absolutely knackered from long busy days and lots of sport etc, but there was some after - lights - out messing around. Mostly sneaking out of your room to chat to a mate in their room - you’d get an idea of when the Host mistress did her rounds and sprint in the gaps! But this wasn’t all the time. We honestly all self-regulated well - as someone else has said, the novelty settles down quite quickly & you’re tired and looking forward to bed!

such fun times 🥰

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d3-DhUT2IDc&pp=ygUZU3Qgc3dpdGh1bnMgYm9hcmRpbmcgdG91cg%3D%3D
year 7’s are all together at this school with the matron very nearby.
it may give you an idea how this school handles bedtime @Jannie65

Lol they put sedatives in the dessert 😆😆😆

I have 2 DCs in BS at the moment. Actually my oldest in Upper sixth is very much glued to their phone but even for them screentime is not a problem at school and they gets more than enough sleep. As others have said, schools have various ways of ensuring that DCs stay off screen and sleep at night but honestly OP a naughty kid who is bent on breaking school/house rules will always find a way. WiFi in the house is heavily filtered and turned off at certain time but if your DC has unlimited data on their phone there’s not much the school can do. Also they have to hand in devices at certain times but if a DC has brought several devices from home and is hiding it, again, there’s not much the school can do. Most kids are shuttered by the end of the day so sleep really isn’t an issue. Also if its full boarding like my DCs school, they are always encouraged to be outdoors and there’s always something going on.

No school or dame or house mistress can offer the kind of guarantee you seem to be after. If its specific to you DC, perhaps you need to work more closely with them and the school to find a solution.

There was very little oversight at the boys boarding school DS attended. They had large dorms in year 9 and 10 , it was completely wrong for my DS .We left during Covid and he went to a day school, it was the best decision we ever made.. Boys drinking to the point of being ill in year 10 ( and going completely unnoticed by housemaster and matron) was the final straw for us. Bullies had free reign, although DS wasn’t targeted it was a very toxic environment. DS was happy to leave.

I'd see it as a safeguarding issue tbh not to mention health and safety, fire risk should an unfortunate event take place!!

The kids at dds school are allowed to take mattresses into other rooms at the weekend if 2 or more (4 man rooms) have gone home. But needs to be cleared through duty house master/mistress

all my DD’s friends at boarding school have burner phones and are online all night long as far as I can tell!

Burner phones are definitely a thing. Also convincing fakes for handing in!

I went to boarding school in the 1980’s and matron used to patrol the halls, and teachers lived in rooms nearby too so would hear you making a noise. Of course we used to talk after lights out, and the punishment if caught was to be made to stand in the dark in various parts of the boarding school, like the dining room or the pantry! But you didn’t usually mess about at night as you were tired after a full day at school and we had an early start in the morning, even at weekends.

Is it single rooms? Or a dorm. A single room would be easier to sneak into rather than a dorm, as a dorm has multiple people in it and would make more noise. There would be staff around until all children are in bed, and at my school matron did a check of dorms before she went to bed herself. But no one would be checking all night.

You make a complaint to the house staff with specific details - who is involved etc and name names. My DD had a similar problem in Y9 and it was dealt with swiftly and efficiently. They told those involved that they had been caught on the CCTV so nobody ever knew we had “told” on them.

Dd was a day pupil but in a school with boarding and did a few weeks as a boarder over the course of her time (and did all but board her final years - 8am to 10pm days Mon-Fri).

The boarder’s were managed strictly in junior school (up to 4th year - so the year after Junior Cert) in shared dorms. Senior school (5th/6th years) they had single rooms in senior house but still with House Mistress and expectations about proper sleep etc. those not managing properly in single rooms - for sleep or for solo study - came back to shared study room in evenings and had “gentle conversations” with house mistress. The teachers actually noticed a lot more than you’d think, as they got in touch with us a few times noticing moods or lack of eating dinner etc even for those not boarding like DD.

But there comes a point where you rely on the values you as a parent have instilled along with school rules. And how much DC respect those.

Like our own “house rule” of phones kept in kitchen overnight …but broken when dd “needed” it for alarms as the analogue clock “didn’t work”. So we had to trust her and that we’d taught decent values, but understand her need to go to sleeep to the sound of someone speaking (DH listened to Radio 4 since pre-teen days, DD was more radio 5 sports but similar, while I changed from music for DH (many years ago) but now listen to history podcasts).

jannie65 our year 7 started boarding this year and sleep has been an issue. He does lots of activities and needs his sleep but some of the other kids are more sedentary so not tired by bedtime. At the start of term these kids seem wired and mess about after lights out. House Master seems quite gullible that the kids are asleep when they are just pretending. Our son ended up exhausted and another kid was sleeping in lessons and the school did not seem to notice. The form tutor is very uninterested in boarders.

They collect phones and tablets in at night.

My son tells me if he has not slept for whatever reason and I message the HM to tell him whatever the issue is. It's dull but I do this daily if I need to until it's sorted.

HM is very nice but new to the job.

If you have an issue I would just report it to the HM and try to nip it in the bud. Our experience is these things don't resolve themselves or improve without intervention.

Of course the school has a responsibility to try and make sure your children get enough sleep, but they are not infallible, just as we as parents are not infallible… my kids have to leave their phones downstairs at night when they are at home, but if they were to cleverly deceive me with burner phones, I can’t guarantee I would know about it?
Ultimately I / the school have to talk to them about why it isn’t a good idea to stay up all night on a phone and trust to their good judgment, rather than expecting a teacher to stand outside their open door all night making sure they aren’t looking at phones.