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This building is home to Dulwich senior girl boarders. At the moment there are five other boarding houses like it with construction to begin shortly on two more. |
Idealising Hogwarts is a bit strange if you think about it. While the boarding school certainly provided Harry with the home life and companionship he had never known on the outside, it is hardly a place most parents would want to send their children. Quite apart from its eccentric curriculum, it was troubled by lax supervision, elitist snobbery and, in some cases, biased or incompetent teachers. That may make for good fiction, but it is a recipe for disaster in the real world.
What is life actually like for a boarder in a British-oriented school in Thailand? To find out the learning post recently traveled to Dulwich International College located on the island of Phuket.
Keeping them busy
Dulwich International is in its seventh year of operation with an enrolment of 720 students from pre-kindergarten through year 13. Like many of Thailand’s larger British-oriented schools, Dulwich delivers the British national curriculum through years 11 and the International Baccalaureate Diploma in the final two years.
The boarding programme plays a very big role at Dulwich, particularly at the secondary level. In fact, 200 of the school’s 222 boarders are secondary students, 55 percent of the total secondary school enrolment. The vast majority are full-time boarders with fewer than 20 going home on weekends.
 Headmaster Nicholas Rugg |
Not surprisingly, Thais still constitute a majority of the boarders, but, says Headmaster Nicholas Rugg, in percentage terms their proportion has declined from nearly 90 percent at the school’s inception to just over 60 percent at present. About ten percent of the boarding students are British, many of them coming from Hong Kong’s expatriate community, Rugg says. The remaining students come from about 20 different countries with Korean, American, Chinese and Japanese constituting the largest groups.
The internationalising of the Dulwich student body is an intentional policy, Rugg explains. "We’re trying to have the best of both worlds. Our Thai students bring a strong work ethic and our other Asian students do as well. Our Western students are perhaps more willing to challenge. That’s part of education as well."
Rugg attributes the success of the boarding programme to activities and supervision. "There is a full programme of supervised homework, an extensive activity programme – compulsory activities during the week for everyone – and for boarders, excursions and activities on Saturday and Sunday. We try to keep the students really busy and occupied," he says.
That is a big attraction for parents, he says, particularly busy parents who haven’t got enough time for their children. "That’s probably why we had so many Bangkok Thai boarders at the beginning," he surmises.
"The parents weren’t seeing them anyway and they were spending all their time in traffic, so they just moved them out. So our initial intake of boarders was pretty much Bangkok Thais. But now we’re getting all these others coming in as well," Rugg adds.
For students, on the other hand, the primary attraction in boarding is the relationships they form with their fellow boarders. "I love being in a boarding house," says San Phanphiphat, a Hat Yai native in his final year at Dulwich. "Friendship is one of the most important aspects of living at school – being able to talk with friends."
This was immediately apparent to secondary school principal Timothy Creber when he arrived on campus. "What I noticed when I first came here," he says "was how well the students know each other. And it’s not just because students know each other because they’re in the classroom all the time. They’re with each other all day every day.
"They can socialise together on the weekend and they can also study together and there’s quite a lot of natural support there."
This, Creber says, can give them some advantages over the non-boarders. "If somebody goes off home and they don’t live near anybody else, they’ve only got the telephone or the e-mail. It’s not quite the same as walking into somebody else’s room and sharing a bit of a concern."
Creating a home
Both Rugg and Creber have been impressed with how tightly-knit the boarding community has become. Creber notes that parents of weekend students often have trouble enticing them to come home. Rugg recounts how many IB students had elected to stay at school for several weeks after their exams ended until their friends finished.
 Head of Boarding Paul Friend stands inside a quad. |
This is not surprising to the head of the boarding programme Paul Friend. The school, he says, has worked very hard to create a friendly atmosphere where its young boarders truly feel at home.
In fact, says Friend, one of the boarding staff’s most important tasks has been to make a clear separation between the school and life in the boarding houses.
"I really felt that in the UK too many boarding houses were just an extension of the school," Friend observes. "Even during the evenings, weekends and free times, the students felt that they were at school.
"So what we’re really trying to do here is to almost put a barrier between the two. We like to think that the boarding houses are our homes. As staff, we run them as our homes. The disciplinary procedures that we may have if students step out of line are more in line with what should happen in a home. So if a student breaks a rule, they’re not going to get a detention or be sent to the headmaster. That wouldn’t happen at home, so we don’t think it would happen in the boarding houses," Friend explains.
"So we give them house jobs, or they do the washing up or things like that. We think we’ve been really successful in fostering this homey atmosphere. We’re saying the boarding house is our home and we get to this point and we say school’s behind us and home is in front of us."
The boarding houses at Dulwich are arranged in quads. The first contains a primary house, two houses for years seven to nine girls and boys, and a senior girls’ house. The second quad has two houses for senior boys with another two houses soon to be constructed.
The basic layout of the houses are quite similar. "You’ll find subtle differences to the houses," Friend says, "but based upon the same principle of a common room area, a communal area, a small place for them to do a little bit of cooking, a house office, a prep room.
"Each house," explains Friend, "has a set of house parents and a resident assistant, so there are two members of staff resident in the house at all times. We also have two non-resident assistants, two other teachers attached to the house to offer tutorial support.
"Each house also has a gap student that we appoint from somewhere around the world, mainly from the UK. We feel they play a vital role, providing the link between the students and the staff. If you like, we’re asking them to be an older brother, older sister. That works well. The relationships that are formed between the gap students and the students are really important.
Students have freedom "up to a point" in how they choose to decorate their rooms. Prior to the recent December holiday break they were given colour charts so they could choose new colours for their bedrooms.
Friend says they were also using the holiday break to begin altering one of the last remaining school-like features of the boarding houses, the corridors. "We’re changing the colours of the walls, the colours of the doors. We’re getting more artwork to be hung on the walls and we’re looking at a different floor covering as well. The hope is that it won’t feel like a school corridor anymore. It will feel like a home."
Homework too
Dulwich boarders may feel at home, but they are still students. Homework is therefore an important, indeed compulsory, part of their lives.
"Every student of ours will do an hour and a half of supervised prep time five days during the week," Friend explains, "supervised by at least one member of the teaching staff.
"All of our residential staff are teachers. That means we know the students very well. We come into contact with them during the day and during free time, so there’s a good relationship there – a good bond.
"We don’t limit the students to prep in the house that they’re in," Friend continues. "So, for example, the students are doing their homework here and they’ve got me on duty as a maths teacher. Maybe they’ve got problems with their physics homework and if it’s higher level IB physics I’m not really much help to them.
"But over the way there, we’ve got the head of physics. In another boarding house, we’ve got an ESL teacher. In another one, the head of maths. In another one, an English teacher, a biology teacher; we’ve got all of these staff around."
 Kamil Tyebally, centre, in his room with friends Ryan Borgesius, left, and San Phanphiphat. From his window, you can see Phuket Bay in the distance. |
"I think it’s a lot better than living at home," says boarder Kamil Tyebally, a Singaporean who moved to Dulwich after living 11 years in Burma. "As far as work is concerned, it’s a lot easier to do work and you have teachers around to help you if you need help. Also all your friends are here so you can ask friends for help. It’s more convenient when it comes to work".
San, who lives in the same house as Kamil, strongly agrees, saying he has an advantage over his friends who live at home. "When I talk to many of the day students, they say it is very hard to do homework alone. There are no teachers to ask and no friends to ask, so its more convenient in a boarding house."
As a senior IB student, San also has special privileges. He has a later bedtime than younger students with no mandatory lights-out time. He also has a connection to the school computer network in his bedroom and, best of all, he can sign himself out of school on weekends from between 9am and 9pm. – as long as he can satisfy the boarding head that he has a legitimate purpose.
"They have various forms to fill out to give to me," Friend explains. "I have to know where they are going, who they are going with, what they’re doing and as long as I’m satisfied it’s a worthwhile trip, I’ll give them school transport to take them out and then to collect them later."
Change of pace
Weekends can be a welcome change of pace for all boarders. "We have a comprehensive weekend activity programme," Friend explains. "On a typical Saturday and Sunday, you will probably find four activities going on each day.
"Those activities range from shopping trips, ten-pin bowling, wakeboarding, rock climbing, mountain biking, to cable skiing.
While the students must pay for these activities themselves, they do get considerable support for the school staff. "We’ll provide free transportation to and from the event," Friend says. "We’ve also got a good supportive admin staff that will contact various companies and say look we’re sending 30 kids, what discount are we going to have."
 Dulwich boarders are free to use the school’s remarkable sports facilities. |
At the same time, there are lots of free activities going on on campus as well, Friend says, especially sports events like football or basketball tournaments. Students also have access to campus sports facilities during their free time.
"We have a member of staff supervising the sports hall, specifically employed to do that job. We have two qualified lifeguards who supervise the pool. They run two sessions every Saturday and Sunday, three hours each session.
"We basically say the grounds are open for the kids to use until it gets dark and as soon as it gets dark we expect them to move into the area around the boarding houses," Friend says.
Perhaps the busiest house of all is the primary house. "Give primary students the option of watching TV or playing video games, they will take it," explains Friend. "So there are always other activities.
"We give the students quality structured time. Every section of the day when they’re not in school we give them a list of activities they can take part in, ranging from arts and crafts to reading, conversation and cooking activities.
Settled lifestyle
 Each boarding house has a common area complete with a small kitchen facility. |
For busy parents or those whose work requires frequent moves, boarding offers their children a settled, closely supervised lifestyle they would have difficulty finding at home.
"They see us – very logically – as a calming influence on the child," says Friend. "They can have continuity. They’re not constantly being sent to Auntie or Uncle because the parents are leaving the country."
But Friend obviously believes a strong boarding programme can benefit almost any child. "I always say that if you put two students in front of me at about 16 years old and one of them has been a day student for five years and one has been a boarder for five years, I can tell you straight away who’s been the boarder," Friend observes with obvious conviction.
"They’re more independent; they’re more mature; they’re thinking for themselves more. I think they’re more tolerant of others; they’re more understanding of others.
"When we get to boarding time, it’s not just ‘OK, we’re not at school anymore’. We’re still in a learning environment. We are teaching the kids how to live with others. When you’ve got 40 students living in one house and one television, you’ve got to be tolerant.
 Dulwich boarders are required to make their own beds, but rumour has it that the Thai housekeepers sometimes help them out. |
It is also a lifestyle that Friend and his staff clearly enjoy. "It’s interesting to note," he observes, "that a lot of the staff, if they do have time off, you can often find them in the common room watching a video with the kids or outside having a game of football with the students. That’s because our student body are a very nice bunch of people and it is a pleasure to mix with them.
"I think probably my favourite time of the day," he continues, "is straight after dinner just strolling back to the houses. The students have an hour and a half of free time and you’ll see some kids sitting under a tree reading books, listening to music, a game of football over there, a game of basketball over there – a real healthy mix of age groups. You’ll get the senior students playing with the junior boarders setting up games, a real good mix of nationalities. We really don’t have a separation between the Thais over here, other Asians here and the Europeans here. It’s a real good mix."
Hogwarts it isn’t.
terryfrd@ksc15.th.com |