Would you pack your children off?
It’s a chance for them to learn skills, make new friends and be away from home, says Charlotte Lytton
The thought first crossed Kiloran Heckels’s mind four years ago when her eldest, Katie, was 10. Looking for a way her daughter could spend the holidays enjoying activities – without ferrying her from sports games to arts workshops to play dates around their south London home – the company director sent her to Uppingham, the Rutland boarding school founded in 1584, which counts Stephen Fry as one of its old boys.
Katie spent five days on the “Page to Stage” course, which offers children aged seven-16 the opportunity to work on various aspects of theatre education, from performance and directing to sound and lighting, with parents coming to watch their final performance at the end of the week.
“Aside from the odd sleepover,” Katie had never been away from home before, but “she really enjoyed it and made some lovely friends – being in a mixed age group meant the elder children took the younger ones under their wing.”
The success of that week-long course, which costs £560 for residential attendees and £355 for those who don’t opt for full-board, encouraged Heckels to send her younger children there, too, and in 2015, all three set off for the East Midlands for part of their summer. For Thomas, now 12, the computing courses appeal; nine-year-old Georgina, meanwhile, goes for the performing arts options.
Though many parents may balk at the idea of packing their children back off to school during the holidays, boarding allows youngsters to experience being away from home, making new friends from across the country and, indeed, the world.
Most summer schools, such as Rossall in Lancashire and Haileybury in Hertfordshire, also offer English language courses to international students, giving British pupils the opportunity to meet contemporaries from China to Italy through sharing accommodation and mixed activities such as football and astronomy.
Windermere School in the Lake District has just added a water sports school to run alongside its popular Summer International School. “We never put two people of the same nationality in the same bedroom so the common language is English,” says Peter Brendling, its principal. Residents pay £2,000 for two weeks, which includes everything except transport there and back.
“They’re not super cheap, but the residential courses are fantastic,” says Leah Hurst, a lawyer for Save the Children who has been sending sons
‘You get to have great fun with friends and wake up later than you would at home’
Ben and Josh to Uppingham, whose Sensational Science course sold out within weeks last year, since 2012.
Her youngest, now 14, “regroups with friends there and wants to become an ‘orange shirt’, which is what they call the children who look out for the younger ones,” she explains. Both of the boys attend Young Musicians’ Week, the school’s orchestral music course, enjoying swimming and sporting activities outside of practice.
“Both were keen to go to summer camps, they’re close in age and close to one another and were happy to go together,” she explains. “I think people underestimate how many children like going to sleep-away camps.”
Others focus on preparing older students to make the leap to university. For more than 30 years, Eton College has run a 10-day residential summer school for Year 12 students from state schools planning to apply to top universities in the UK and overseas. Funded by sponsorship, the £450 cost of board, lodging and tuition can be reduced or in some cases waived, depending upon financial circumstances (though applications close in March for the year you wish to attend). Cardiff Sixth Form College, a co-educational, independent boarding college, also runs a two-week Oxbridge preparation programme to help students to understand what the application process entails and give them a taste of what they can expect at university.
For parents, of course, residential courses can provide an added boon: with all three children away at Uppingham, Kiloran Heckels was able to go away with husband Ed, sans sproglets, for the first time in more than a decade.
Boarding for the summer can be “quite high risk if your children have never been away,” but Heckels believes these courses offer immeasurable value to their young students. “You get to have great fun with your friends, wake up later than you would do at home and avoid the rush to beat traffic or get the train.”
Top marks all round, then.