Boarding Life
If you have never boarded before, you’re about to have the experience of a lifetime.
Pastoral Care
The House structure provides pupils with long term stability. Each house has a Houseparent who has overall responsibility for the pupils in their house. They live in accommodation attached to their boarding house, many with families of their own, and are assisted by an Assistant Houseparent and a team of three other tutors who, in most cases, will be a member of the teaching staff.
There is always a member of staff on duty in each boarding house, who is clearly visible and easily accessible to the pupils.
In addition, each boarding house has a resident Matron who looks after pupils’ laundry and cleanliness. Matron is someone the pupils can talk to and seek advice from, and also deals with pupils’ day-to-day medical issues, supported by our Health Centre, which is staffed 24 hours a day with a team of trained nurses. Doctors from a local practice hold surgeries at the School five mornings a week and regular dental and orthodontic surgeries are held at the School. Specialist clinics are also held, e.g. for asthmatics.
Staff are very accessible to pupils, supervising their prep, eating meals with them and socialising in the boarding house. This helps to build up the respect and trust of pupils, so that they feel able to consult and confide in staff.
This helps the staff get to know pupils and pick up very quickly when something is worrying a pupil.
House events are an important aspect of boarding life. Houseparents take pupils out on trips to the theatre, cinema and bowling, and give them treats, just as a parent would. House-based activities take place every Wednesday evening and most Saturday evenings and staff support pupils when they are performing in concerts or plays or in sporting events.
Boarding Houses
Some ninety boys and girls enter Christ’s Hospital each September into the Second Form (Year 7), with a smaller entry into Little Erasmus (Year 9) and Deps (Year 12).
There are eight boarding houses for girls and eight for boys, from the ages of 11 to 17 years. Our final year pupils (Year 13) live in separate, mixed boarding houses called Grecians houses.
Approximately forty-five to fifty pupils live in each house. Typically, nine or ten children join each house at the start of the new academic year, seven in Year 7 and two or three in Years 9 or 12. Everyone quickly gets to know each other.
Activity for Life Programme
When looking at a school sports programme, it’s important to look beyond the number of teams that compete on a Saturday and/or the list of alumni who have gained national honours.
Instead ask the question, ‘What is the purpose of sport in schools?’
We believe physical activity is vital to a person’s wellbeing. To be physically active depends on feeling confident in an activity setting. Therefore, it’s important to invest in the understanding of body function and movement.
Our Activity for Life programme aims to provide an enjoyable, satisfying and balanced programme, empowering every pupil with the knowledge and skills needed to make responsible lifestyle choices that positively impact on their health and wellbeing. Our aim is to give pupils the best opportunities in life by allowing them to develop areas of interest and/or excellence that will stay with them beyond school, thus helping them to engage in lifelong physical activity.
Our Activity for Life programme is based on three key principles:
All pupils have an equal opportunity to experience physical activity that emphasises participation, practice, engagement and enjoyment. Our Year 7 pupils follow a programme that emphasises values and multi-sport development. In Year 8 pupils we build in learning to compete and in Year 9 we have enhanced skill development with increased competition.
Pupils experience a carousel of sporting activities in Years 7 and 8, leading to a programme of choice in Year 9 and the introduction of “lifestyle”’ activities. Alongside this, pupils have one session a week delivered by physical education and sports specialists in the build-up to their participation/performance session on a Saturday.
As pupils progress towards the senior years, the programme develops into a three-strand approach:
During these senior years, as pupils evolve within the Activity for Life programme they decide which of the three strands they will gravitate towards. Pupils can have a hybrid programme i.e. recreational in one sport and aspirational in another. The dedicated and enthusiastic staff at CH work hard to ensure all sessions are pupil- centred, with the pupils being engaged cognitively and emotionally as well as physically. Our programme really is Activity for Life.
Weekends
Weekends at CH are very busy, with lessons on Saturday morning, sport in the afternoon plus a wide variety of activities. Some of these activities are compulsory, some are a matter of choice and there is also some unstructured free time for pupils to enjoy.
In general, our school terms work on a three weekly cycle with every third weekend designated as either a “leave weekend”, a half term break or an end of term holiday. On leave weekends, pupils go home or to guardians on the Friday afternoon and return late on the Sunday evening or, with special permission, early on Monday morning. During leave weekends a boarding house (or houses) may be kept open to accommodate those who really cannot go home, in particular, our overseas students.
For the other two weekends, there are opportunities to leave the site and/or go home with the correct permissions (see below).
Saturdays
On Saturdays there are five academic lessons in the morning, followed by Band Parade. After lunch all pupils are involved in sport (often matches against other schools) or other timetabled activities.
That is the end of formal commitments on a Saturday: after this senior pupils can go to Horsham and our final year (Year 13/Grecian) pupils can also go to Crawley, to do some shopping and use recreational facilities. Neither day children nor boarders can leave before this time.
Saturday nights at CH are “full on” and there are always organised activities such as film nights, discos, talent shows, quizzes and much more.
Sundays
Sundays are more relaxed and, pupils have more choice in what they want to do. There are plenty of facilities on site to encourage different activities – the sports hall, practice rooms for musicians, common rooms in Houses for relaxing with friends, lovely grounds etc…
All of those pupils on site will attend a chapel service which can take place in the morning or in the evening; there is a compulsory Chapel Choir practice for choir members before the service and there is a compulsory Band practice for band members on Sunday mornings.
Sunday afternoons are a good time for pupils who live locally to meet up with their parents.
Permissions and Safety
We must always know who is on site and we need to make sure that anyone leaving school is doing so in a safe and secure way. It is important, therefore, that we have clear procedures for granting permissions and signing out:
Those going home or to guardians for occasional weekends (ie between leave weekends).
Parents/guardians must let Houseparents know by the previous Wednesday what they plan and the associated travel arrangements. If Houseparents are contacted by e-mail they will always ring to confirm directly with parents/guardians that the arrangements are satisfactory. We will only allow pupils to leave the site when we are sure that they will be looked after by a responsible adult,
Signing Out
When pupils actually leave the site they must follow House signing-out rules. This is really important and any failure to do this will be treated very seriously.
New Pupils
Our experience is that children settle in most quickly to boarding life when they stay with us from the start of their first day of term until the first leave weekend, whatever boarding pattern is followed beyond that. The boarding staff have enormous experience in helping children to feel at home here and on the whole, new pupils settle in very quickly to boarding life.
We also find that children want to take part in activities over the weekend and feel they miss out if they do not do so. This means that a very high proportion of our children stay over on most weekends – please do not be surprised if your child wishes to do so as well, no matter what you or they may have felt in advance of joining us!
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