Looking for full boarding girls schools

[AmazingGrace2009]

Grateful for some advice: I’m looking for a genuine full boarding girls school (e.g. more than 70% full boarders) for my two DDs for Y7 and Y9. We live overseas so I do wish that the boarding houses will provide organised activities for boarders and will not be emptied with only a few international students left at weekends. I weight more on pastoral care and school environment (e.g. with nice teaching staff / school team, friendly neighbourhood, etc.) but if the schools are academic (no need to be hothouse though) is certainly a plus. 2 hours from London is acceptable.

I heard that some boarding schools claim that they are full boarding but they in fact flexibly allow students to go home on request. Some boarding schools may also tend to shift from full boarding to weekly boarding. This kind of information just can't be found simply from the ranking table or from the school websites. If there is any information from parents, it will just be great. Thanks!

The full boarding girls' boarding schools are more flexible about going home at weekends than they used to be, so they will empty out to an extent. There is a thread about CAT scores somewhere which gives an idea of what standard your DD needs to be to get in to the school.

Ranking the full boarding all girls schools by CAT entry score (very approximately)

130+ (to put this in perspective this is approximately St Pauls Girls/ Westminster level)
Wycombe Abbey.

125+
Cheltenham Ladies College
St Mary's Ascot (RC)

120+
St Mary's Calne
Downe House

+/- 100
Beneden
Sherborne Girls
Woldingham
Tudor Hall

Ignore the crazy talk about the girls at the most popular school being anorexic and depressed. Can you visit them? CATS don't determine everything, eg Calne's results are very good and it's a lovely school. Good luck!

Not sure if Woldingham is full boarding, btw.

A lot of the younger girls at Woldingham vape, you even see it near CJ. It's sad.

Some info here: www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/independent-schools/what-type-of-boarding-full-weekly-or-flexi

@themanwithnoname

Not sure if Woldingham is full boarding, btw.

I heard that weekly and flexi boarding has become popular in Woldingham. Not quite sure about the % of full boarding girls but likely below 50%.

@HooverIsAlwaysBroken

I would just like to defend Wycombe Abbey. DD is very happy there. She is an exception in that she comes home briefly most weekends (we love to see her and she is) but she loves the school. The extracurricular activities are fantastic with high levels of sport, music, drama and lots of clubs.

She has occasional periods when she works hard but this is balanced with more quiet periods. I think a key thing is that she never was tutored and the school was amazing in guiding her and supporting her (essay writing was nothing she really had done before going there).

The girls we see struggle were tutored, sometimes heavily, before coming to the school. To suddenly maintain a high level of academics, independently and access and process the learning on your own when you are used to someone explaining it 1:1 is hard.

It is also hard if you worry a lot or if you are used to always doing amazingly. DD started to do revision notes the first year, they didn’t really work and some first (and in some cases second) exams went much less well than she thought. She got cross, had some chocolate and kept refining her revision note technique. Now she has it down to a T.

There are also many outstanding girls there so you cannot be easily intimidated. Some girls are music grade 8 aged 11 (orchestras are brilliant). Some girls do a very high level of sports outside of school. Some girls are academically off the chart. You need to be able to compete against yourself (chances are someone will always be better than you), take people for what they are, find some friends to study with, help each other and be able to relax with Netflix and popcorn.

For the right girl it is an amazing school and we have found pastoral care excellent (although we have only really needed it for illness and trying to convince DD to cut down at least one of her about 10 extracurricular clubs).

If you have a confident girl who can navigate the above, I really don’t think you need to worry at all. If you have an easily intimidated girl, a girl who is used to tutoring or a girl who is easily stressed, you may want to look a bit at other schools as well and investigate what really would make your child the happiest.

Thanks a lot! Very truthful and useful advice! Seeing your comments, WA is an excellent school for brilliant girls but obviously not a good fit for my DDs. Couldn't agree more that it's important to look for a school that would make my children the happiest.

The Times top independent secondary schools in the UK 2022

1 St Paul’s Girls’ School, London
2 King’s College School, Wimbledon
3 Wycombe Abbey School, High Wycombe
4 Magdalen College School, Oxford
5 Guildford High School, Guildford
6 St Paul’s School, London
7 Westminster School, Westminster
8= Brighton College, Brighton
8= City of London School for Girls, London
10 Sevenoaks School, Sevenoaks
11 Eton College, Windsor
12 The Godolphin and Latymer School, London
13 Haberdashers’ Girls’ School, Elstree
14 North London Collegiate School, Edgware
15 The Perse School, Cambridge
16 The Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School, Elstree
17 St Mary’s School Ascot, Ascot
18 Lady Eleanor Holles, London
19 King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham
20 Royal Grammar School, Guildford

Not sure if you're still considering but I attended one of your target schools when all boarders - like you was looking for traditional full boarding for my DCs -not because overseas but because that is when the real value add happened eg lectures, extras, house sports, team practices led by older girls, house music, rehearsals for plays etc.
Rejected WA & CLC & Benenden because now allow girls out all weekends whenever they want - chose DH because it restricted this to a few weekends a term. They changed the policy a week after we signed up. Nearly all live within 30 mins, in London (so jump on train every weekend) or overseas. She's often left in dorm alone at weekends. It makes it weirdly parochial and homogenous on the one hand and very divided on the other. Think other poster who said that too close to London to be full boarding is right - most start at 11 (therefore ex London day) whereas ours was boarding already so started at 13 - much fewer join then. Were told it was 50% but more like 20%. We were naive!

Real problem is that extra curricular activities (that are the whole point unless you want a GCSE factory) which used to happen at the weekends in the old boarding model have to be squeezed into day girl availability Monday 9am to Sat 12. Has halved what they can do e.g. play rehearsals clash with a club - because majority go home at the drop of a hat, there is skeleton staff provision at weekends and fundamentally changes the offering - we were hoping she could access opportunities at school that we struggle to coordinate/provide because of geography/siblings/working hours - and we have been left wondering what is the point of boarding (unless you are overseas) - simpler maybe to move closer and send them as day pupils? Heard head of CLC recently publicly stress at open day that zero difference in experience for a day girl and a full boarder. Which really does mean that the model they are pursuing feels like a day school with a selection of travelodges attached. And the ones left in wonder why they are abandoned there - when everyone was in the same boat it never occurred to us to mind because it's "school" - but now "school" finishes at 12 on a Saturday, three quarters go home or to matches leaving the lonely leftovers, the HM switches from teacher mode to "mum" mode (which my DD hates and says is really embarrassing when she tries to be matey!), and they'd really rather be at home because there's nothing value add to do - it's all just slightly vacuous keep them busy/pass the time stuff like nails and fruity face masks. [vomit]

Problem seems to be business model - try to be all things to all people - but our experience is that they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Also self-perpetuating - those looking for full boarding have exited all girls' schools as a result so fill up even more with London 11+ weekly boarding types.

Advice I have been given is to consider co-ed for old-style HMC model - more proper full boarding/no day and weekly. Reluctantly we now have to do that. (The one I haven't looked at because not Catholic is St Mary's Ascot which may be a more traditional boarding model as its students come from all around the UK as well as overseas?) Also gather Sherborne Girls has those from e.g. Cornwall and also army families so closer to full boarding.

We are so disappointed we are going to try and relocate and abandon boarding - or go co-ed. Good luck.

Oh and also meant to say do not believe anything you are told by the schools - this is their major Achilles heel and they do everything possible to cover it up. But I haven't met anyone at DH who doesn't either live in London or have a house there (even those from Nigeria/China).

Or live locally I should have said!

The. Key question to ask is how many children sleep at school on a Saturday night.
Downside could be worth a look, although coed.

I have a very different experience of DH.. and do not live in London.

DD is a day girl as I was not in favour of full boarding. It has been and remains a significant struggle getting her to spend time at home of a weekend owing to the plethora of activities, sports matches, workshops etc scheduled. While I do worry at times that DD is over scheduled, she has thrived engaging in what I have to say is a very comprehensive array of super-curricular options. I've needed to shift my position to allow her to largely spend her weekends at school as she clearly benefits from all of this. I don't recognize the notion they spend weekends painting nails, doing face masks...

While girls do have flexibility to go home (bar what they call ''closed'' weekends) and I'd agree a large number do appear to come from London the only time I've seen the school 'vacate' is when the activities planned aren't of interest..(which is rare). Covid19 obviously hindered this but very much less so now. That said I believe the school is flexible for girls who are perhaps struggling away from home. This was quite prevalent in the first year, they are still quite little then.

I don’t think some of the posts here are accurate. Looking at Wycombe Abbey, it has exeat weekends (when everyone must go home), closed weekends (when everyone must stay in) and open weekends (when you can go home after sport on Saturday and must be back for chapel on Sunday evening.)

Given that girls will have lessons on Saturday morning, and sport on Saturday afternoon, there isn’t a great deal of time to be filled, but it seems to have a very comprehensive programme of weekend activities this term. These include ice skating, the RockSoc spring concert held jointly with Harrow, a wine tasting dinner, jewellery making, yoga, theatre trips, the Caledonian ball with Eton, school runs, archery rampage, book club, magic nights and quite a lot more. Downe House appears to offer something similar. I can’t see much of problem here.

That's correct, DH has exeat weekends & closed weekends. The other weekends they can stay or they can go home for all or part of the weekends from after lessons Saturday. The reality is many have commitments on the weekend for sport or one of the weekend activities outings planned. They have various each weekend... girls may not leave until they have fulfilled their commitments i.e. sports matches.

@nevereverfinished

Oh and also meant to say do not believe anything you are told by the schools - this is their major Achilles heel and they do everything possible to cover it up. But I haven't met anyone at DH who doesn't either live in London or have a house there (even those from Nigeria/China).

Ohhhhh...Can feel your disappointment. How lonely it will be if most girls do not stay at weekends. Having considered all comments here and based on gut feeling from my communications with different schools, I go for SG. Hope it's the right choice.