November 09

Boarding staff – not standing still.
How do schools in the twenty first century differ from their counterparts in the twentieth century? No doubt there are many and various ways – in 1980, my children attended a village primary school in Wales where the toilets were actually at the bottom of the school playing field – I kid you not. When the County decided to close down five such schools and build a beautiful new primary school in the middle village of the five, there was uproar: ‘Save our Schools!’ we yelled at public meetings and appropriate street – and village green – corners.
And we meant it – great learning went on in those little schools. And whatever the inconvenience – no pun intended – of the distant lavatories, it seemed to many parents no hardship compared with what happened when the super school was built, and to attend it, my youngest child got on a school bus on his own at the age of four.
I suspect the staff who taught me never, ever went on a course in term time. They seemed to me to be never sick, never late, never absent, and I knew because many of them put the fear of God into me and I often longed for disaster and lightning to strike them at least temporarily.
In my own early lecturing and teaching days, do I remember going on courses? Nope. But then I only taught for three years before stopping for ten to be at home with the family – hence my close acquaintance with village schools – so if I’d asked to go on a course, no doubt the Boss would have said, ‘You’re only just qualified, woman, you’re supposed to know everything, now get back in the classroom!’
But when I did return to the classroom, my new Head decreed that I should have a week – a whole week! – on a course for new Heads of English. It was held in York, and it was bliss, partly because it was a very long time since I had been in contact with so many colleagues, who really cared about apostrophes and Austen, spelling and Spender, drama and Dryden. And Milton. And Eliot. And Chaucer, all the big guns of literature, and all the tricky challenges of language for the pre ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ generation.
Actually, if we’d done our job better, maybe Lynne Truss would not have had to write her anatomy of our many shortcomings with our own language. But I do remember our collective zeal for our task, and how the course wound us up and sent us back to the classroom ticking.
When the government decreed there should be Baker Days, an extra five days in the school year for staff training and development, and an end to Heads’ objections that staff could not be spared from the classroom, because these were days for teachers to work and children to stay at home, it made perfect sense to me. Teachers – perhaps more than most people – need refreshment, professional, intellectual stimulation, time to think and reflect upon practice, be it good, bad or indifferent. Surely we could only be the better for these grace days?
But I have lurid memories of Baker Days. Few teachers wanted them, whatever was on offer. If my Boss would once have said I should know it all now get on and teach it, now staff were saying, ‘We know it all, let us get on and teach it!’ The climate was one of, ‘How dare you tell us we need professional development? We – ’haughty raising of imperious shoulders‘ – are teachers!’ Like a whole army of Lady Bracknells faced with shabby handbags.
So it’s no wonder that training days for teachers have changed a lot over the years – whole school top down training on child protection, departmental break outs for particular topics, year group break outs for others, opportunities to swap places with teachers in other schools, days shadowing people in other schools or in industry, you name it and probably some school has tried it. Teachers remain a hyper-critical audience, stroppy in the face of a sub-standard presenter, jealous of their time being wasted, reluctant to continue training at all, it sometimes appears, in a way which would surprise colleagues in professions like law, where an agreed number of annual points demonstrating continued professional development are all part of the job.
It helps if CPD is seen as entitlement for the employee rather than government requirement or imposition. And if teachers do benefit from the refreshment of old ideas and the chance to become acquainted with new ones, how much more must this be true of teachers and others working in boarding schools?
Such staff really ‘live the job’ for twenty four hours a day. Many boarding staff spend their days as teachers, Heads of Department, Heads of Year, with academic and pastoral responsibilities in the school day, followed by even more thorough-going pastoral responsibilities all evening and through the night too. Others do not teach but are pastoral specialists, key players in the life of a boarding house.
For many parents of boarders, the staff who care for their offspring after school’s out are the ones who matter – they really are in loco parentis, because they take over at the time when most children head for home, hearth and chocolate biscuits, and ‘Neighbours’ (is it still ‘Neighbours’? I may be out of touch…) and mobiles and computers and mates and every other element of home life that most boarding schools will mirror or match.

There have been revolutions in parenting in recent years. Have boarding staff kept up?
At the Boarding Schools’ Association, we believe they are keeping up wonderfully well. As the only provider of professional development courses for boarding staff, we are at the sharp end of delivery, and all the evidence points to a very high take up of our seminars and courses, coupled with high satisfaction rates from participants.
There has been a substantial increase in numbers of staff enrolling on our various courses in recent years. Why? We believe it’s partly because we try to keep the day seminars bang up to the minute to reflect the current interests and concerns of boarding staff – this year, it’s eSafety and Cyberbullying; partly it’s because Ofsted has been more rigorous than previous inspectors of boarding welfare about applying National Minimum Standard 34, which states that ‘All staff… receive regular review of their boarding practice, with opportunities for continuing training in boarding.’
In September, no fewer than 203 boarding professionals had their work assessed at the Examinations Board of Roehampton University as they came to the end of their certificate courses in Professional Practice or Professional Development, run by the BSA and accredited by Roehampton. These courses involve 5 training days of their own, plus extended written work in which participants have the opportunity to explore research topics of their choice within their own setting. Recent topics chosen have included sleep for adolescents, borrowing and theft in a boarding house, coping with loss and bereavement, and training prefects.
These are serious courses, involving real commitment on the part of students and their supportive schools, and ending with a graduation ceremony at Roehampton University. The more house staff a boarding school has with such a developed interest in the intricacies of the job, the better for pupils, parents and the school itself.
Tim Brighouse, one of the giants of education, has said that one of the major elements of school improvement is nurturing the intellectual and professional strengths of staff. For boarding schools today, that means all their staff.
And they really are worth it.

Hilary Moriarty is National Director of the Boarding Schools’ Association, but writes here in a personal capacity.