1) Boarding schools in Britain that run English language courses receive the highest average scores on British Council inspections compared to other types of language providers. Boarding schools average 7.4 out of 15 strengths, while no boarding schools have received negative scores. 2) British boarding schools that offer language programs can be divided into two distinct groups based on their inspection scores - those scoring between 2-4 strengths, and those scoring 7 or more strengths and qualifying as Centers for Excellence. 3) British boarding schools that provide language education vary and can include prestigious long-standing academic institutions, international study centers, and international high schools.

1. B
oarding schools do it
best! Our analysis of
British Council inspec-
tion reports shows that English
language courses run by British
boarding schools have the high-
est mean average score – 7.4
strengths out of a possible 15 – of
any provider type in the country.
The contrast with the results
from accredited language centres
as a whole is startling. Not one
boarding school has withdrawn
its inspection summary or had it
withdrawn by the British Council
while awaiting re-inspection. Yet
among accredited centres as a
whole, 5 per cent of all statements
have been withdrawn. Not one
boarding school has a negative
score, showing more weaknesses
than strength, while the figure
for accredited centres as a whole
is 4 per cent. The most common
score for accredited centres is
zero, achieved by 27 per cent of
all centres. But when it comes to
boarding school providers none
scores less than two points, and
the mode average is an astonish-
ing nine points of strength. One
caveat, though: there are only 31
such schools in our analysis out
of 117 young learner specialists,
so the sample size is small.
The other notable feature of
British-Council-accredited board-
ing schools is that, as a glance at
the graph on this page will show
you, they divide into distinct
groups: those scoring between
two and four points, the average
range across accredited centres,
and those scoring seven or more,
which qualifies them as Centres
of Excellence. Only two score
five and none at all scores six.
This phenomenon of the ‘missing
middle’ appears somewhat less
dramatically in the distribution of
both the young learners sector and
accredited centres as whole. By
contrast the most common scores
in the university sector are five
and six, making it, as we disclosed
last month, the most consistently
good performer.
However, unlike universi-
ties, boarding schools cannot
be counted a complete sector
in their own right. For a start,
the private residential second-
ary schools accredited by the
British Council offer two quite
different kinds of provision:
English language summer cen-
tres, or in the case of Bede’s and
Millfield summer multicentres,
or language and academic pro-
grammes for students going on
to mainstream British education.
Then, of course, there are three
main types of boarding schools.
First there is the grand old Brit-
ish boarding school – residential
academic institutions with a hun-
dred or more years’ experience
of teaching five-to-eighteen-
year-olds. These include the
famous public schools – a term
technically reserved for not-for-
profit organisations which are
members of either the Headmas-
ters’ Conference or the Girls’
Schools Association, and which
are celebrated as much for the
social capital they bring (the ‘old
boys’ networks’ that dominates
the British establishment) as for
their academic results.
Ten public schools are accred-
ited by the British Council,
including top young learner spe-
cialist St Edmund’s College Ware
and, the latest to be accredited,
Stonyhurst College. A number
of public schools also run inter-
national study centres to prepare
children for mainstream British
education. These can be stand-
alone schools, such as that run by
Taunton and Sherborne, or cen-
tres within schools, such as the
one run by Moreton Hall.
International study centres
can also be attached to other
independent schools, such as
D’Overbroecks, or run as pri-
vate stand-alone centres, such
as Bishopstrow and Alexanders.
A number of these, includ-
ing Buckswood School, have
turned into full-fledged board-
ing schools taking students right
through to university entry.
There are also a growing num-
ber of international high schools,
normally starting at fifteen or
sixteen, which offer education
up to university entrance level.
Some of these, like St Clare’s
Oxford, have a mix of British
and foreign children, while oth-
ers, like St Michael’s Tenbury,
cater exclusively for non-British
kids. Still others take teenagers
only from sixteen, which under
English educational law means
they are not officially board-
ing schools at all but sixth-form
colleges. The status of such
colleges under Welsh, Scottish
and Northern Irish law remains
a mystery to the Gazette, but
boarding schools are rare out-
side England: only one boarding
school runs a British-Council-
accredited centre – Fettes Centre
for Language and Culture, which
is run by Fettes College, the so-
called Eton of Scotland. n
ELyoung learnersPage 12 November 2015
Distribution of boarding-school-owned
centres by points of strength
4 60 8 122 10 14 155 71 9 133 11
Numberofschools
0
1
2
3
5
4
6
Number of strengths in most recent British Council inspection
A head start for boarders
British boarding schools outperform the competition on British Council
inspections. Melanie Butler investigates why they do so well
A BIGGER SPLASH Summer school students in the Olympic-size
swimming pool at Millfield School, famous for its sports champions
CourtesyMillfieldEnterprises
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