Does a complete list of UK independent boarding schools exist?

[CakesOfVersailles]

There are a million directories, guides, and lists out there about UK boarding schools usually focussing on one aspect e.g. top 25 girls' schools for sixth form, or best weekly boarding within 90 minutes of London, or all schools that belong to XYZ school group etc.

Does anyone know of a complete list of all independent schools with some form of boarding provision?

Independent Schools have an inspection body so presumably there is a list held by them?

Thanks that's a good idea - but I was hoping for a publicly accessible list.

I know the ISI doesn't inspect ~1000 schools (OFSTED has responsibility for them) so quite possibly would still miss several boarding schools.

I’m intrigued to know the purpose!

Ok I will be honest there is no grand purpose - I am not even looking for a school place for DC at the minute. I thought it might be useful for that in the future.

Currently though it is simple curiosity - I used to work in boarding and thought I was fairly well versed in the schools available but every time someone on here is looking for a school other posters suggest fairly well established, large schools that I have never even heard of.

Yes, on the boarding schools association webpage.

www.boarding.org.uk/388/school-search

The thing by with Ofsted inspections with boarding part ceased a while ago. It's now all with ISI again as well, so you can search with them too.

You are interested in a list of all independent schools as a general interest when the press are crawling over independent schools for raps culture... What a coincidence 🧐

@tinseloatcake I am not suspicious as any journalist would have found the list already 🤷🏻‍♀️

Or maybe I just have too high an opinion of journalists 😆

isc.co.uk has a find a school search option.

@tinseloatcake lmao I wish I had the excuse that I was paid for this. In any case I am not interested in day schools.

Thank you for the other lists but I think those are just councils/associations made up of members and not all schools.

@CakesOfVersailles does ISC not cover it? Are there reputable schools not covered? I’m really surprised.

@PippinDog

Thank you, it's certainly the most complete list I've seen. I checked it for one school that wasn't on there but I now realise that school closed last year which would explain that!

However it only lists three Islamic independent boarding schools and some I know exist and are operating aren't on the list - they are not really of interest to me, I would not send a child there as I am not muslim but it does indicate that their list is incomplete.

There’ll be a good reason they’re not on there.

Okay, if you are searching for Islamic boarding schools for a mild interest, NOW I am suspicious 🤨

I'm not searching for islamic boarding schools, I'm looking for a complete list of boarding schools.

Given this list only had three islamic boarding schools when there are more, it indicates it is not a complete list.

But is does have hundreds of schools listed so is the most complete I've seen.

OP you need to try www.completelistofUKindependentschools.com

www.ukeas.com/boarding-schools/uk-school-list.php

Mr Pickles/OP
the UKEAS list is not complete, either...

@CakesOfVersailles if you know how to manipulate Excel spreadsheets then you can download the latest national school census data from here: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2020.
It only covers England, but you might be able to find similar census data for the other UK nations too.

I have the Jan 2019 (not 2020) school census data on my laptop already because I'm a school governor and a bit of a data geek. I've just had a quick look at the file called Schoolspupilsandtheircharacteristics2019pupilcharacteristicsUD.csv and managed to extract the data you want. I sorted it using the "total borders" column and then filtered it to school level (to remove the regional aggregated data) using the "geographiclevel" column. I extracted a list of 637 schools in England with at least one boarder. Of these, 480 are Independent schools (use the phase-typegrouping column for that filter).

I would post the full list, but I suspect it would exceed Mumsnet's maximum character limit if they have one, so you might need to recreate it at home.

*"total boarders" column not "total borders" column.

By the way, since you mentioned it, the census data only lists two independent Islamic/Muslim boarding schools, one in Bradford and another in Bury.

If there are more that you know of then they either aren't in England, aren't registered (which is certainly not unheard of), or didn't fill in the census correctly. Unless, of course, I just messed up the filtering.