A new Theory of Change for Boarding School Research
AN UNDER-RESEARCHED AREA
Comprehensive longitudinal data on the true impact of boarding is lacking - largely because the assumption has always been that boarding school is a positive and a privilege.
However, a growing body of anecdotal, clinical, and qualitative research suggests a range of concerning trends being reported in respect of former boarders, current boarders, and therapists and health care professionals:
Elevated rates of anxiety, depression, and trauma-related symptoms
Difficulties with intimacy, attachment, and parenting
Overrepresentation in addiction and mental health settings
Alarming rates of institutionally-enabled emotional, physical, and sexual abuse
These patterns - while by no means universal - are sufficiently widely reported to warrant deeper exploration. We hypothesise that these negative reports are often disregarded as being insignificant or only applicable to a very small number of outliers, due to a human cognitive deficit known as Survivorship bias. This common cognitive bias, which affects the way humans perceive and interpret data, means we often mistake a small number of positive outcomes as representing the whole, whilst failing to count the not-so-positive outcomes. For example, the highly visible stars who make it in Hollywood skew society’s perceptions of the glamour and gains of fame, whilst overlooking the thousands who never make it and who are consigned to lives of hardship or disillusionment.
The Survivorship Bias - in respect of the Boarding School system - serves to skew the perceptions reinforced by the many cultural narratives that frame a boarding education as both a privilege and a positive investment in a child’s future. As a society we tend to collectively retain that view even, when a host of evidence might suggest a range of differing experiences and outcomes - including an increasing number of former boarders reporting deeply painful experiences, or new understandings of child development calling into question practices that may prove to be detrimental to the child in the longer term. By taking the dominant narrative as a fundamental truth, and overlooking reports or evidence to the contrary, we risk affirming harmful structures, and possibly overlooking the individual, institutional and societal impacts that may be hiding in plain sight.
A NEW THEORY OF CHANGE
Our Theory of Change recognises that a range of experiences and outcomes exist across the boarding population, but centres on the fact that meaningful outcome studies are virtually non-existent in boarding school settings, beyond narrow measures like exam results or alumni prominence.
As such, entire generations have accepted boarding as a positive - even highly desirable - mode of education and this tacit acceptance of the merits of the boarding institution as a proxy for home and family life has encouraged the spread of boarding globally. But the lack of robust, longitudinal research into the impact on the child, or the child as it moves into adulthood means we have little understanding of the real impacts on those in the care of boarding institutions.
Nor has there been any meaningful challenge to long-held notions of familial separation as a means of building independence and resilience, despite growing neurological evidence about the needs of the child, the developing brain and the impact of separation trauma on learning, security and attachment.
Our new theory of change seeks to fill these evidence gaps, by reviewing and challenging some of the prevailing cultural assumptions that underpin predominant boarding school narratives.
As a Boarding School Research Hub, we commit to conducting ethically boundaried, methodologically robust research to build a full and fair picture of the outcomes of boarding school, so people can understand both the risks and rewards of the boarding system, and help ensure future generations are educated in safe environments, with they can thrive.
A Public Health Perspective
One factor our research will consider is the latent impacts of boarding, including potentially unseen impacts on the public health system. This line of enquiry challenges the element of the Survivorship bias that suggests that - as the preserve of a wealthy elite and an aspirational mode of education - boarding predominantly produces happy, independent well-adjusted children, equipped to go on to become productive and highly successful adults. Our research will aim to quantify and understand why many former boarders step forward in later life to report a range of lifelong issues that they trace back to their boarding experience, and why ex-boarders appear to be overly represented in certain health and addiction settings.
We will explore how boarding and boarding outcomes differ from other demographic groups with institutional care histories, such as cared for, fostered, or adopted children. We will examine why these groups are automatically accepted as highly vulnerable, with higher susceptibility for mental health, addiction, relational, family and parenting issues - versus perceptions of boarders as privileged. As such, a care history is automatically flagged on health care systems, with a significant proportion of the public health budget ear-marked for care leaver support and interventions. Yet evidence suggests the long-term effects of parental separation for boarders - particularly younger boarders - may be comparable to other recognised Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Moreover, increasing reports of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse within the boarding system - often enabled by the institutions themselves - suggests that those educated in the most privileged settings may leave with ACE scores similar to many underprivileged children - but with the added conflict of being told their experience was a privilege for which they should be grateful.
We hypothesise that due to the prevailing Survivorship Bias, former boarders are viewed as universally privileged and set up for success, and as a group they place no burden on public health in the way other groups of institutionalised children might. This not only fails the child, but puts the boarding system outside social policy frameworks. If a boarding school education does indeed contribute to higher-than expected levels of later-life distress - as a growing body of anecdotal, clinical, and qualitative research suggests - then the implications for healthcare and wider social systems may be significant, and merit proper auditing and deeper exploration.
JOIN US IN OUR ENDEAVOUR
Our theory of change is centred on a common, well-documented cognitive bias - the Survivorship Bias - which distorts the way humans evaluate complex systems, leading us to mistakenly believe a few visible successes truly represent the whole. The truth is often more nuanced. By replacing prevailing cultural narratives and assumptions with open-minded enquiry, and committing to longitudinal, cohort-based research, we aim to fill evidence gaps, and to build a more balanced, informed, and responsible understanding of the true outcomes of a boarding school education.