‘I thought it was crazy’: Inside the Sydney boarding school experience

Daniel Ritchie’s day as a boarding school student began just before 7am. After a shower, rollcall was at 7.15am followed by breakfast. There was time to give his room a quick clean before phones were unlocked, giving students about 20 minutes to scroll and text. “You get a bit of phone time, talk to your parents, whatever, and then you put them back,” Ritchie said. Lessons ran from 8.20am to 2.50pm. Then, it was sports training or free time.

Welcome to the life of a boarding school student.

Despite the rising costs, the number of NSW students in boarding schools over the past five years has remained relatively stable.

Daniel graduated year 12 last year and said when he first arrived at Shore, a harbourside school, in year 10, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Now he credits the structured evenings as key to his academic success. After a 6pm dinner, there was another rollcall followed by two hours of study. Phones were unlocked again at 9pm. Locked back up by 9.45pm.

“I thought it was crazy … I’ve just never been that structured before,” he said.

The early weeks were tough. While other students could focus, he was not really quite sure what studying entailed. “The first year, I struggled a lot, and actually wanted to come back a lot of the time. But when I really found my feet, it became … the best experience ever, and I’m just so grateful that I was able to go there,” he said.

After growing up on a farm about 20 minutes outside Orange, he went to Shore because a friend was boarding. Schools say most parents who sign up their children were normally boarders themselves.

The late arrival trend also played out for Rex Bassingthwaighte. “I really wanted to get out of Dubbo and sort of spread my wings a bit and explore, you know, something a bit more than Dubbo,” he said.

On his first day, he estimates he shook one thousand boys’ hands and, despite having preconceptions that it would be run like a military academy, he said it was more like a big holiday. The school was also a springboard into his NRL career.

He signed a four-year deal to start with the Roosters NRL club in 2024 and credits the coaching staff and other mentors with helping him succeed.

“I was very close with my boarding housemaster Brendan Morris,” Bassingthwaighte said. “He was like a dad for most of us. If you got in trouble, he was there to help you. He wasn’t there to get angry.”

When boarding schools opened in Australia in the 19th century, they replicated the long tradition of British institutions, with cold showers and general hardness. King’s opened first, in 1832, followed by Sydney Grammar in 1857, Newington in 1863 and The Scots College in 1893.

Depending on your reading habits or your age, you might associate boarding schools with Charles Dickens, Evelyn Waugh or Harry Potter.

Shore headmaster Dr Peter Miller said boys’ boarding has been through a series of revolutions over the past four decades, from the 1980s, and thanks to changes in societal attitudes towards masculinity, were very different places compared to a generation ago.

“My key messages to people about boarding is that it has changed,” he said. “And it’s really interesting to see this seems to be a wider perception that that’s the case, that it has evolved, and it is a more human environment, as indeed I think schools are.”

Shore conducted its own YouGov poll earlier this month, finding 80 per cent of parents believed boarding has improved in some way, citing technology, facilities and living standards, and better wellbeing support.

The majority of parents polled saw boarding school as a “practical solution” rather than a status choice. Just over one-third said working long hours had renewed interest in boarding, followed by 31 per cent who said it provided better access to educational opportunities.

That comes at a steep financial cost. Boarding and fees cost about $85,000 for year 12 at Shore. It’s $100,000 at Cranbrook, and almost $90,000 at King’s.

Dr Miller said his school is seeing more students come in the later years, which perhaps might be driven by financial pressures, but he said the decision to go and board is also being driven by older teenagers. “It’s not for everybody,” he said.

“What’s happening now is the numbers at year 7 and 8 are relatively low in boarding generally, and then what happens is people are coming later.”

He said at his school, they wanted to see that the student had made the decision their own.

“What we’re seeking for you, if you take this on, is to take on the responsibility of the commitment and the decision as an adult, not as a child … You have to take responsibility for making this a success.”

Tanya Miller sent her son Oliver to board at Shore School at the start of year 7 last year. She’d been a boarder herself at PLC Sydney and, coming from Orange, she could see the benefits of an education in the city. But she was cognisant of possible challenges, from the quality of the food to homesickness. And the decision came with financial sacrifice. In the weeks before Oliver left for his first term of year 7, she talked to him about all the things that could go wrong.

“Every night we’d talk about a potential scenario at boarding school, and how that’s going to look,” she said.

She said Oliver immediately loved the environment and said boarding was more like a family home with staff. He’s also really pushed himself when it comes to academics.

“Our son, who refused to do homework in his upper primary school years, has … hit the ground running in year 7,” she said.

Compared to when Tanya was at boarding school, there is significantly more communication from the school about what the students are doing.

At St Joseph’s in Hunters Hill, which has 620 boarders, headmaster Michael Blake said the school was authentic to its tradition of providing boarding for country families.“Not everyone can afford to pay six years’ worth of fees and not every family is ready for their son to leave home at 13 years of age,” he said. Enrolment numbers are structured such that it adds 15 students to every grade to provide opportunity for those regional families who might want to come to the school later.

But day boarding has also changed. “We’ll have day boys here from 6 o’clock in the morning, involved in co-curricula through sport or through some academic studies,” he said.

They get breakfast, lunch, and morning tea, and day boys must stay until 5pm so they do their co-curricular activities together. There is also an option to stay until 8pm. “The day boys have a shower, and then they’ll have dinner with the boarders that are here, and then they’ll study through until 8 o’clock before they go home.”

Abbotsleigh’s head of boarding, Katie White, said that compared to 20 years ago, there was a strong focus on connection and inclusion, and a “deliberate” approach to technology.

“Technology has helped overcome the ‘tyranny of distance’, allowing families to remain deeply connected and actively involved in their daughters’ lives while they are at school,” she said.

“We are also reinforcing current Australian expectations around social media use for younger adolescents. In boarding, this allows the early years to focus on building face-to-face relationships, independence and confidence, without the added complexity of social media.”

While boarding numbers have grown in NSW, in its latest census, the Australian Boarding Schools Association found co-ed schools in NSW now outnumber boys-only schools 19 to 11 – a dramatic shift from the original boarding landscape.

Among those that switched to co-ed was The Armidale School in the state’s north, which began admitting girls in 2016. They now make up 40 per cent of its boarders, said David Drain, the school’s director of boarding. He attended St Joseph’s in Hunters Hill and, since working at The Armidale School, had noticed how the co-ed shift had changed the school.

“You’re obviously getting more girls in the school, you’re getting more female staff as well … I feel this softens the general feel. I think the boys have a bit of a softer approach as well, just to their day-to-day conversations.”

He said boarding has changed. There’s more mentoring for younger students, more communication with parents, and schools are more responsive when it comes to pastoral care.

The school’s principal, Ray Pearson, said while boarding school has changed, so too have the parents. “We’re now seeing almost completely that both parents are working and earning an income, whereas it used to be a single-income family,” he said.

“I’m seeing a shift in the pastoral responsibilities of schools and working in partnership with the parents to deliver those key messages as they grow up.”

The school has worked with parents to ban students from using a smartphone until year 9.

“We do that because we really want to support them in being able to build really effective interpersonal relationships and meaningful connections, and phones are a real barrier to that,” he said.

A couple of families opted not to enrol, but he said the policy boosted numbers.

“We’re quite happy to be positioned as the bad guys. It’s a school rule, so the parents are going to adhere to that rule because adhering to rules is the right thing to do.”

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