Boarding Schools

The boarding school is an educational institution that provides its pupils with meals and accommodation. Although often identified with elite and reactionary provision, the boarding school has served as a site for the regulation of marginalised groups and as a centre for countercultural experimentation. This entry begins with a history of the English public school, a template for elite education in many countries. It then turns to the role of boarding schools in state education, focusing on pedagogy in China, before addressing the destructive use of such institutions in the education of indigenous people. Theoretical approaches to the boarding school are introduced here, and the entry concludes with a discussion of contemporary debates concerning the benefits of boarding school education.