British boarding schools are dying – and it’s not just down to VAT

Sarah* had worked as a housemistress in a small English boarding school for four years when she learned the school was closing. In between grieving the loss of her job and searching for a new one she tried to understand why the closure was happening. There were several factors at play, including the introduction of VAT to independent school fees and declining interest in single-sex education. But what she sees as another crucial reason is an ideological shift in what parents want for their children. “Unless there was a need, like parents being in the military, it was quite a struggle to find parents that felt they wanted to put their children into a boarding school,” she says, “especially at a younger age.” For many years, the British boarding school loomed large in our cultural imagination. From Mallory Towers to Harry Potter, as well as being the backbone of the British hereditary monarchy (Prince and Princess of Wales’ eldest, George, 13, began at Eton this month), the picture painted was one of jolly hockey sticks, banquet halls, and lifelong friendships. At the other end of the scale was the boarding school as a place of scandal and abuse. As recently as last week, British actor Johnny Flynn said he thinks that private schools “should be burnt to the ground” after his own “traumatic” experience of bullying at boarding school. Shorts Somewhere between those two extremes are Britain’s ever shrinking fleet of boarding schools. While many independent schools have cited a rough few years since the VAT rule change, the overall number has increased from 973 in 2024 to 1,032 in 2026. By contrast, the total number of boarding schools registered with the Independent Schools’ Council (ISC) has decreased from 438 to 423 (3.4 per cent), with 11 closing in 2025 alone according to their latest census. Since that publication in January, there have been several other closure announcements. And the schools that aren’t closing are struggling to bring in enough boarders to keep dorms running. Earlier this year, Salisbury Cathedral School in Wiltshire, founded 930 years ago, announced this would be the last year of boarding, only taking in day pupils from 2027. The number of pupils at boarding schools has been declining since the 80s into the Noughties where numbers remained steady around 70,000 until the pandemic. But the most dramatic drop in the number of pupils was in the most recently published data, the ISC Census 2026, which found an 8.2 per cent drop in the number of boarding pupils. Mike*, who was head of year at a boarding school that closed this year, put it bluntly: “The business model [required] we have a set number of full-time boarders to bring in enough income to cover everything. But we could never get enough. The people who were doing the job day-to-day, the housemasters, the teachers, they knew it was unsustainable, but nobody was prepared to accept that the actual boarding model was dying – until it was too late.” Prince George, 13, started school at the elite boarding school Eton College this month (Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP) Parental demands There are parents for whom boarding is the best choice, giving a level of stability when the parents cannot provide it such as military members who move around regularly. Then there are the international students who want to buy into the prestige of the British boarding experience. But both these groups are being somewhat reduced by the fees increase. Insiders have warned of a worsening armed forces recruitment crisis due to VAT, while the increase in international satellite schools launched by British schools has inadvertently siphoned off a chunk of reliable income. “Why would you send your child from Nigeria to Britain, paying £50,000 a year plus VAT, when there are British boarding schools set up now in Nigeria?” Mike says. There are, of course, benefits to boarding that any parent may still find appealing irrespective of circumstance: immersive living, fewer distractions, a focus on independence and forging community. But historically, boarding has also relied, to an extent, on intergenerational enrolment – my children go because I went – something that more modern parents are rejecting. Charlotte Sharpe, 60, was first sent away to boarding school aged eight. She assumed that, like the rest of her peers, she would then send her two children to boarding school at 13. “I used to say it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. So why wouldn’t I give that to my child too?” That was right up until the point they were viewing potential boarding schools. “When we went to look, I had a visceral response. I literally felt sick and I said to my husband, ‘I can’t do this, I don’t want them to go to boarding school.'” The strength of her reaction prompted a re-examination of what she previously called “the best years of her life”. In the years since (her children are now 30, 28 and 24, having attended day schools) she retrained as a psychotherapeutic counsellor, has specialised in working with ex-boarders, and works for an organisation called Boarding School Concern on a voluntary basis. She now believes that boarding is fundamentally harmful for early child development. Last week, British actor Johnny Flynn said that private schools ‘should be burnt to the ground’ after his own ‘traumatic’ experience of bullying (Photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty) “In my view, there is definitely a potential harm to boarding. It’s really the cost. You have to adapt to being away from home and it’s really the cost of that adaptation down the line. If you’re sending a child below 11 (and I would almost take that up to 13) it’s an attachment trauma. We should be with our primary caregiver, and so you will have to adapt to being taken away from them.” The result of this separation, she says, fosters an inappropriate and unhealthy independence and can manifest later in life as difficulty with intimate relationships, a lack of trust, and not allowing yourself to be vulnerable. It’s certainly true that parents are more likely to send older children now, than younger. Across ISC schools 12 per cent total are registered as boarders vs day schoolers. That rises to 30 per cent for sixth form (age 16 to 18) and drops to 3 per cent for junior pupils (age seven to 13). But Sharpe argues that even after 13, boarding can exacerbate difficulties children face at any school. “Post 13, other things come into play: your previous attachment with your parents, how far you are from home, how often you see them, whether you’re good at sport, whether you’re clever, whether you’re tall, whether you’re short, the colour of your skin, your sexuality.” To counter these concerns and enable greater contact between children and their parents, many modern boarding schools have started diversifying the ways that children can attend. Rachel Bailey, headmistress at Benenden School, an all-girls boarding school in Kent attended by Princess Anne, says that they have seen a marked change in parents’ involvement in their children’s lives. “We’ve always liked it when parents came to visit us and we encouraged them to do so, but we’ve also become more flexible on the weekends. The days of every weekend being a closed weekend where pupils had to stay in school are pretty much gone.” Matthew Judd, head and CEO of Christ’s Hospital in Sussex agrees. Founded in 1552, the school is most famous for their Tudor uniforms and marching into lunch, as well as the fact 80 per cent of students are on fee-assisted places. He explains that “parents want the weekend to be family time, it’s more important than ever, so we now no longer have lessons on a Saturday”. Both schools have also introduced day students to broaden their appeal and further integrate into the local community, with Christ’s Hospital extending fee assistance to locals this year. Matthew Judd, head and CEO of Christ’s Hospital in Sussex, says ‘parents want the weekend to be family time, so we now no longer have lessons on a Saturday’ (Photo: Toby Phillips) Then there are the “flexi-boarders”. Robin Fletcher, CEO of Boarding Schools’ Association (BSA), says: “Parents haven’t necessarily rejected boarding, they’ve changed what they want from it.” Will Dixon is the COO of Lord Wandsworth College, a co-ed boarding school in Hampshire. The school was an early adopter of a more flexible model – back in 2013, they introduced both weekly boarding (where students return home on weekends) and flexi-boarding (where students board three nights a week). In recent years, many others have followed suit. Dixon says that as a result, “we’ve not seen a drop in the number of boarders. What we have seen a change in is the make-up of what those boarders look like.” He says that flexi-boarders now make up about 45 per cent of their student body and it appeals to parents (who like the flexibility and reduced expense) and children (who like that bit more time with their friends). “I think, as in any sector that goes through change, it depends on our ability to adapt to match what our customer, our parent body and pupils, wants. Actually, over that time our school has grown significantly, and a huge amount of that has been fuelled by that flexi boarding market.” Part of the parental reservation to boarding school centres around pastoral care. Sharpe says that the best time she ever learned anything about her children – and got to the heart of what they were facing – was in the car on the way home from school. “You can ask questions and when they get home you can see they’re not being themselves, so you keep asking until you hopefully get to the bottom of it.” She says that there is no one doing that for you at boarding school on an individual basis. “You’re in a house with maybe 20 to 40 children and a house parent and a matron. These are lovely people doing their best but they cannot properly ‘parent’ that many children.” Dixon says that parents have found flexi-boarding has countered that. “What we’ve found from parents is that when they’re at home, they’re really at home and it’s quality time between parent and child. They can even sometimes get a proper conversation out of their teenager which is a rare thing. And then when they’re at school they can really engage and have that social element.” Rachel Bailey, headmistress at Benenden School, an all-girls boarding school in Kent, says that they have seen a marked change in parents’ involvement in their children’s lives (Photo: Georgina Edwards) Of course, parenting isn’t just about the level of contact with a child – it’s also about the relationship that you develop. Many modern parents have adopted a more “gentle parenting” approach that focuses on empathy, respect, understanding and boundaries that runs counter to the traditional strict rigidity of many boarding schools. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sarah says: “I think the gentle parenting parents aren’t the kind to be sending their child to boarding school.” But Bailey, head at Benenden, sees their success in part down to the fact they have adapted to a gentle parenting framework. “We go out of our way to make sure that the students feel heard. The old school view of boarding: that you come in and do what you’re told and there’s no give at all, that’s not the case.” The boundaries that the school sets, she says, are clear and communicated both with parents and the children, and it is precisely because of this they continue to thrive. The schools spoken to for this story all emphasise the importance of options. “One of the joys of the British education system is choice,” Bailey says. “And the reason that is so good is because children are individuals and what suits one does not necessarily suit another.” Simultaneously, organisations like Boarding School Concern continue to push for more interrogation into what the choice to board, made by well-meaning parents, can mean for their children – in the short and long term. “I wouldn’t want to be critical of anyone else’s [parenting] choice, because I think these choices are being made without all the information,” Sharpe says. “Until the potential harmful impact of boarding is more widely out there and accepted, parents will continue to make choices without all the information.” In the meantime, the British boarding schools that remain open are fighting for the business of a shrinking pool of parents who still believe in the benefits of their model – and have to have ever deeper pockets to afford to pay for it. *Name changed for privacy reasons