Sally-Anne Huang, headmistress at Kent College, reports for Overseas Living about life in a boarding school

I remember when I first went to work in a boarding school many years ago, I did so in spite of the fact that there were boarders there, and nursing silly assumptions and prejudices about families who wanted rid of their children and regimes based on ‘If’ and Tom Brown’s school days. How wrong I was.

Community
Thankfully, it only took a few weeks for me to realise that the heart of a school lies with its boarding community and that, far from keeping children from their parents, a boarding school works hand in hand with families, enriching quality time at home by taking the pressure off parents to manage everything single-handedly, and offering real stability in situations where home life is unavoidably fluid.

In that first term, I applied for a job as an assistant housemistress and my family and I have been living and working in boarding schools ever since. I have had eight years at the chalk face as a Housemistress in two different schools, and have been a resident Deputy Head and now Headmistress. It is a tremendous privilege to share my life with the boarders here at Kent College. I get to see a lot of them in the evenings and at the weekends. I invite them into my home since, after all, they constantly invite me into theirs as I visit boarding houses and share time with them in prep, at meal times and during boarders activities. We are all having a lot of fun.

Of course, I know that it must be a really daunting experience to send one’s child to board for the first time, especially if the school is in another country. No school worth its salt will underestimate this or fail to address not only homesickness but also potential parental anxieties. However, the truth is that it is often harder for the parent – with a gap in home life – than for the pupil who is usually too busy making friends, meeting academic challenges, and taking part in a whole range of activities to be homesick for long. Most boarders at KC will joke that they do so much more here than they would at home and, of course, very few homes can offer on-site sport and music facilities, a library, IT suites and over 60 different activities ranging from archery to bee-keeping.

Experts
There is also the issue of expertise. Most parents only get to raise two or three teenagers in a lifetime. We are doing it all the time and your average Housemistress will have lived through adolescence hundreds if not thousands of times. Why struggle alone when you can enlist such experience and calm support? It is a rare child that gets from 11 to 18 without some sort of hiccup – but top quality boarding staff will have all the advice and reassurance you need.

Choosing to send your children to boarding school is a huge step – both emotionally and financially. But it is also about the provision of wonderful opportunities for your children, the chance to learn about new cultures, to grow in independence and confidence, to acquire expert guidance and establish who they really are before they face that, even scarier, next step – adulthood. Don’t be daunted – go and have a look for yourselves. Like me, you are likely to be very pleasantly surprised by all a boarding life has to offer.

Contact
Sally-Anne Huang MA Oxon, PGCE, Headmistress
Kent College Pembury,
Old Church Road,
Pembury, Tunbridge Wells,
Kent TN2 4AX
www.kent-college.co.uk
+44(0)1892 822006