The number of boarding pupils in Britain fell 4 per cent last year, faster than the decline in private schools as a whole, according to the annual survey by the Independent Schools Council. Since Covid, boarders have fallen from 14 per cent of private school pupils to less than 12 per cent.
The boarding experience has loomed large in English culture, from the 1857 novel Tom Brown’s School Days to the 1968 film If…. and the recent TV sequel to John le Carré’s The Night Manager. It will not be universally mourned. Charles Spencer, brother of Princess Diana, described his prep school, Maidwell Hall, in Northamptonshire, as “without love”. In a recent memoir, he detailed the abuse he suffered there in the 1970s. Maidwell closed last year.
But Rendcomb prided itself on being different. Its founder Noel Wills wanted boarding schools to be places where children from different classes could meet in “absolute equality”. He founded Rendcomb “in the belief that the true aristocracy among men is in reality simply an aristocracy of brains and character”. The school drew heavily from Gloucestershire farming families and council funding. Richer, fee-paying students were almost looked down upon.