Best Schools - Boarding Schools’ Association expecting a review to guardianship standards

Changes to the UK’s national minimum standard for boarding schools will demand more is done to ensure schools are aware of international students whereabouts throughout their stay in the country.

According to Robin Fletcher, chief executive at the Boarding Schools’ Association, a review of the Department for Education’s minimum standards for boarding schools includes a section requiring schools “to do more” and there will be inspections to ensure schools comply.

“At the moment, schools do not have to get involved directly in [the] guardianship area, and a lot of schools do not, and leave it to parents to get a guardian. Not all schools even recommend using an AEGIS accredited guardian,” he told delegates at the British Association of Independent Schools with International Students conference in Birmingham.

Although schools comply with regulation under current minimum requirements, it is not “completely unheard of” for schools to be unaware of where students are during holidays or weekends.

Because schools sponsor students’ Tier 4 visa, the Home Office dictates that they are responsible for students while they remain in the country.

According to AEGIS, guardians “act on behalf of the parents, helping the student adapt to their new life… [and] suitable homestay accommodation is arranged by the guardian during holidays.”

“Pupils must be given the time to explore subjects they won't be tested on such as PSHE and political engagement”

Dr Bernard Trafford, writer, educationalist, musician and former independent school headteacher explains why he feels that 'unexamined subjects deserve a place on the curriculum'.

If the accountability regime were rendered sane (try to imagine it), the curriculum really could purposefully create the best opportunities and lead to the best individual outcomes for young people. It would be broad until at least age 14, if not longer, truly educating pupils instead of driving towards and through exams.

Some independent schools bravely exploit their independence to enrich the curriculum. Bedales School’s minimal core of iGCSEs leaves space for its own suite of BACs (Bedales Assessed Courses). Wimbledon High School recently announced that its girls will take fewer GCSEs in order to follow its home-grown PPE (politics, philosophy, economics) course. Such plans work for individual schools because they’re driven by the distinctive pedagogical inspirations and strengths of their staff. Maintained schools must be given the same creative freedom to ensure their pupils gain a suitable level of understanding in a wide range of unexamined subjects.

At secondary level, discrete specialist subjects retain a place: we need the expert passion of their teachers to take pupils as far as they can go, deep into the subjects that inspire them, to become the next generation of experts. Where they want to specialise, they must be permitted to.

A 21st-century curriculum shouldn’t seek to do away with discrete subjects, but it should demonstrate and exploit better than hitherto the links between them, allowing pupils to comprehend its overall coherence.