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22 May 2026

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Opinion

State boarding schools: Partnerships: ‘Failures are not an option’

Holyport College, the first new free school to offer boarding places, opened in September and will eventually take 500 state pupils. It is a non-selective co-educational secondary school with a Christian ethos said to be modelled on an independent boarding school, with pupils divided into houses and doing homework at school. The aim is that […]

State boarding schools: Governance: ‘A multitude of extra requirements’

Strong governance and leadership are as essential in a state boarding school as they are in any other school. Our systems of governance need to include all the functions that are typically associated with day schools and academies – school standards, finance, curriculum, personnel, premises, finance and so on. However the boarding dimension creates additional […]

State boarding schools: What are they? How do they work?

State boarding schools are an unusual hybrid. They sound a bit like private schools (they’re not), they sound as if they’re free (also wrong), and they sound like something we don’t have in England. But we do. In fact, we have 38 of them. Unfortunately, most people only understand schools as local places that children […]

School funding changes: made simple

The way in which the Dedicated Schools Grant, one of the main components of school funding, is calculated is changing. The Department for Education says that, for the first time in a decade, funding will be based on pupil characteristics rather than historic levels of spending. With additional guidance recently brought out on this, Schools […]

SEN: schools can’t do it alone

Away from boarding schools and instead looking at SEN provision, Mark Baker discusses the challenges of budget cuts in schools attempting to meet new reforms Children and young people with special educational needs (SEN), their parents and schools are currently facing huge changes. Quite rightly, parents have wanted more of a say in SEN provision, […]

Developing enterprising skills can never be a quick-fix

Global Entrepreneurship Week is a good start, but it’s not enough to teach young people all the skills they need to be entrepreneurs Global Entrepreneurship Week is back; a mid-November flurry of enterprise and entrepreneurial activity. It will be a week in schools of competitions, challenge days and trade fairs. Enabling Enterprise will be busy too: […]

Is that apple for teacher an old custom or a bribe?

Schools must not ignore the Bribery Act but a few simple steps should make it easy to avoid running the risk of breaking the law There is a tradition that on the first day of term a bright-eyed and keen pupil will bring their teacher an apple. It’s a cute and harmless custom, isn’t it? […]