Most of the 180 boys who board at Marist College Ashgrove come from farming families in rural districts, says principal Michael Newman, and only a dozen or so of the school’s boarders are from city-based families in Brisbane. These boys board on a weekly basis – they leave the Brisbane school on Friday and return on Sunday evenings for Mass – the start of the week for boarders.
About 1800 boys are enrolled at the school. Newman says the school intends to keep the number of weekly boarders low but demand for flexible boarding models is growing as Brisbane expands and congestion on the roads worsens.
Weekly boarders have some flexibility, he adds. They might stay on for Saturday sport, although they miss out on Sunday’s extra-curricular activities. “We have an activities coordinator who organises fantastic things for boarders on a Sunday – going into country areas, going to beach, going to the movies, so many different opportunities,” he says, adding the coordinator sets up something different every weekend – it might be a surfing lesson or a fishing lesson.
Boarding begins in year 7 at Marist College Ashgrove. As well as weekly boarding for a few students, the school also offers extended day boarding, Newman says. These boys don’t sleep overnight but they spend long days at the school, and they can be picked up at about 7.30 pm.
This type of boarding is increasingly popular with busy parents, Newman says. At 3pm the boys finish school and head to the boarding school where they have lockers, he adds. They get changed and store all their gear. Then they might have sports training or music lessons. At 5pm they spend an hour studying, supervised by tutors. At 6pm they have dinner with the boarders, and then go and play a bit of sport or kickaround.
“By the time the parents pick them up, they can be showered, they can be dressed,” he says. “They have all their homework done, they’ve had a feed, and they’re happy.”
Chief executive of the Australian Boarding Schools Association, Richard Stokes, says about three-quarters of the boarders in Australian boarding schools come from country areas, leaving a quarter with families based in a city – perhaps just too far from the school for a comfortable commute.
“Weekly boarding numbers are reasonably strong for the two big cities, Sydney and Melbourne, where kids have long distances to travel within the city,” he says. The concept of weekly boarding has been around for a long time, he adds. “But it is definitely growing, and it’s growing almost in the same sort of speed as the traffic’s getting worse.”
Boarding schools have increasingly recognised that it’s not necessary for boarders to stay in school for most weekends, Stokes says, but there is a broad understanding that the numbers of weekly boarders should be limited to ensure full-time boarders who stay in school don’t feel left behind.
“Some schools limit the number of weekends that a student can leave to make sure there are enough kids in to support the kids who don’t really have that opportunity,” he adds. “But, certainly, leave rules are much more flexible than they used to be.”
There is also the concept of casual boarding, Stokes says. “If a student is in the school play and needs to be available for rehearsal two or three evenings a week, the school might permit a few nights boarding, and then the student would go home for the rest of the week,” he adds. “That’s a really clever way of providing a really good service to the parents of your boarding house. Once some kids get the taste of it, they like it so much that they want to stay.”
Some boarding schools offer introductory boarding in year nine, Stokes adds. Day students at the school might board for a week or a fortnight to fully understand what boarding entails. The program will be rotated through all the students in that year to give them all a taste of boarding. “They find that a few of those kids take it up because they found the experience really, really worthwhile,” he says.
The number of boarders in Australian schools has decreased slightly over the years – from about 25,000 15 years ago to about 22,000 today, partly because the complement of international boarders hasn’t bounced back as strongly as hoped after the Covid pandemic. “We had about 3,500 international students before Covid, and it’s still only a bit under about 1800 at the moment,” Stokes says, adding the increasing popularity of weekly boarding could bring boarder numbers back up again.
St Hilda’s school on the Gold Coast in Queensland offers term boarding, says the school principal, Mrs Virginia Warner. “Part of that’s about ensuring that there are strong social and emotional ties,” she adds.
About 180 girls, mostly from rural Australia and ranging in age from year 5 to year 12, board at St Hilda’s. Some come from families many hours’ drive away, so boarding suits those girls who want to compete in Queensland Girls Secondary School Sporting Association competitions and play sport at a very high level, Mrs Warner adds.
St Hilda’s boarders can spend a few weekends a term away from the school, going home or staying with family or friends. There’s only one closed weekend a term when all boarders have to be present in the school, usually for a “significant experience”, Mrs Warner says.
There are good reasons why St Hilda’s isn’t as open to flexible boarding as some other schools, she adds, noting continuity and consistency of experience were important. “Connection, culture and community is the first lens we look through, so that our boarding girls when they’re in the house together, they know they’re in the house together.”