Great boarding schools offer pupils a home, not a place to sleep after work. People, not systems, must come first.
Bromsgrove provides continuity of education from Pre-Prep to the end of Sixth Form. Pupils can and do commence boarding at age 7 (Year 3). Each pupil is in a bespoke House relevant to their age and gender, each with live-in Houseparents. Our Prep School Boarding House, Page House, caters for 100 boys and girls aged 7 to 13.
Senior Boarding
In Senior School there are four single Boarding Houses and one co-ed Sixth Form House. All are large, comfortable, family homes run by resident Houseparents together with Assistant Houseparents and a team of dedicated Housemothers, tutors and ancillary staff. There are no exeat weekends at Bromsgrove so the School is busy every weekend, there are organised Saturday activities for all pupils whether boarding or day and most Sundays see boarders enjoying trips out to the cinema, shopping, theme parks and other local attractions. Bromsgrove is very well situated to access many open spaces and interesting historical and cultural destinations.
They will see a resident assistant houseparent (also a member of the academic staff) in each house and a dedicated tutor team, doing day and evening duties on a rota basis. Support, encouragement and trust are the watchwords. All meals are taken centrally (except for the evening meal at Housman Hall), so Bromsgrove’s thirteen day and boarding houses are continually integrating.
Activities are numerous and varied as befits a true boarding school. From high culture (trips to London and Stratford theatres) to paintballing, go-karting to concerts, Bromsgrove looks to inform, entertain and, occasionally, thrill its boarding community. But insisting boarders fill every second of a Sunday with organised activity is ridiculous, but so is leaving young people adrift with nothing to do. Some boarding schools become ghost towns at weekends. Bromsgrove does not.
To start with, we never close: there are no exeat weekends and so we guarantee a lively programme of weekend activities that are, for the most part, optional. Sport, Art and many recreational facilities are also open, and inevitably there will be rehearsals for plays and concerts. Bromsgrove looks to nourish its boarders without force feeding them.
During the holidays, there is the option for pupils to stay at School as part of the 'Guardian Angels' team on site. They can also return home or stay with their guardians. The School, of course, provides and organises transport services to airports whenever necessary.
We have a number of different nationalities within the boarding community, in the School as a whole there are over 70 different nationalities. Full integration into the boarding community is actively encouraged and achieved with help from the EAL department which provides small group lessons during the week as well as individual class support. EAL support is also provided for boarders in the evening to help with prep.
All Bromsgrove pupils, be they day or boarding, are attached to a House. The Houses are small communities of 13 to 18 year olds, usually consisting of around 60 pupils. (The only exception is Housman Hall, which is Sixth Form only). A Houseparent, Housemother and dedicated team of tutors and support staff are responsible for the well-being and happiness of pupils within the House.
Prep Boarding
At Bromsgrove Prep, the aspiration is that for boarders, the boarding house is a home from home. Resident Houseparents are members of the teaching staff, and they are assisted by Housemothers (who oversee the domestic arrangements) and non-resident House tutors. Boarding should be a joy, a confidence builder and a voyage of discovery. Occasional boarding possible; we are flexible if boarders wish to go home on a Saturday night (most do not), and Sunday programmes are hugely varied.
Boarding at Bromsgrove Prep is so much more than the excellent teacher/pupil ratio one expects in a first class boarding school. A team of dedicated nurses under control of the School Doctor provides on site medical care in the School’s Health Centre; high quality varied food from chefs preparing three good meals a day (not a reheated import) is standard; and there are staff on hand twenty four hours a day, seven days per week.
Page House
In September 2012, Page House was opened for our Prep boarders, housing all of the pupils under one roof. This bigger house, for up to 100 pupils, has allowed us to expand our boarding numbers in response to demand for more places. The boarding house reflects the high standards of accommodation being achieved throughout the Senior School, ensuring that our youngest boarders also live in modern, top quality accommodation fit for the 21st century. Find out more about life in Page House .
Boarding Options at Prep and Senior
Full Boarding
Full boarders make up the majority of the numbers within the Prep School. The full boarding fee per term covers any charges incurred as part of the Saturday morning activity programme and transport on all weekend trips. The only additional charge, in terms of boarding, is the entry fee for the weekend trips and a weekly amount for tuck.Weekly BoardingWeekly boarding is especially suitable for those pupils who live a reasonable distance away and for whom transport to and from school adds a considerable amount of time to an already busy day. Weekly boarders come in to School on the school bus on Monday mornings and leave on a Friday evening, again on the School bus, normally the pick up / drop off is at the extreme limit of our existing routes. These transport costs are included in the weekly fee per term (current bus routes are available from the Transport Manager). Pupils also benefit from daily supervised prep and have all food provided and laundry taken care of during the week. When compared to the daily fee plus the transport fee, and the cost of food, weekly boarding is very competitive.
Forces' Families
Bromsgrove Prep and Senior Schools have a long tradition of welcoming children of forces families. We are ideally located near the heart of the motorway network and so can be reached easily and quickly from any part of England. We are always happy to put prospective forces families in touch with parents of existing boarders so that they can get an alternative view point. We offer generous bursaries to forces families, the Educational Allowance can be added to with our means-tested bursaries.
Taster Visits
For those considering boarding at Bromsgrove, we are more than happy to arrange taster days/weekends to give the children an opportunity to see if boarding life would suit them.
Pre-Prep made their own red, white and blue wreaths and then held a one minute silence around the flagpole this morning for the 80th anniversary of VE Day.
Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, we visited Llanwrtyd Wells with Old Bromsgrovian Christopher Price to record his memories of living there as a Bromsgrove pupil during the war.
