Drawing on models across other care, medical and institutional settings, this group looks at all aspects of the boarding school as an institution, and a system with its own traditions, stakeholders, power structures and governance. It considers institutional logics, and how boarding schools employ educational methods and conduct their care responsibilities in loco parentis, alongside questions about group size, safeguarding, and individual child child welfare and development.

THE INSTITUTION specialist group will operate with 3 sub-groups, each exploring different lines of enquiry:    

a) Legacy & Power
Explores institutional hierarchies, the role of tradition, and the distribution and exercise of power across different types of boarding schools. The focus will include teacher-pupil dynamics, peer hierarchies, disciplinary practices, reputational safeguarding, and identify whether there are systemic conditions that might allow harms to occur, or to remain misunderstood, unacknowledged or unaddressed.

b) Education Modes
The Education Modes sub-group will critically examine how institutional learning environments such as boarding school might shape cognitive, emotional and educational development. Topics include the role of tradition, pedagogy, architectural design, performance pressure, selection / deselection of pupils, and long-term academic, financial and relational outcomes.

c) Safeguarding & Welfare
Assesses the formal and informal frameworks that are in place to ensure student wellbeing, including safeguarding, inspection regimes, guardianship, and accountability structures such as mandatory reporting. This sub-group will examine whether the historical power granted to boarding schools might still influence approaches to accountability, governance and safeguarding today.