With South Africa so much in the news at the moment, our minds are naturally drawn to Roedean South Africa, our sister school in Johannesburg. I was therefore delighted to be asked to join thirty Old Girls from South Africa for lunch in London recently.

As with many of such meetings, the appeal for the Old Girls was the chance to talk to old friends and meet others: I was able to catch up with my fellow Headmistress, Mary Williams. Mary and her team had shown me such kindness when I visited the school in January 2008, taking me to key parts of Johannesburg such as the Apartheid Museum, the the Fort and the Constitutional Court as well as guiding me around the beautiful school buildings in Houghton and introducing me to staff and pupils.

The issues that face those growing up in today’s South Africa are huge: whilst its constitution is the most progressive in the world and its store of mineral wealth massive, 43% of its population live on less that $2 a day. It has unemployment running at 30% and yet suffers from crippling skills shortages. Whilst it was the first country to perform a heart transplant, its people’s health record is among the world’s worst. Whilst it spends a significant chunk on education, its national results are very low.

The response at Roedean South Africa is to face these issues with their eyes wide open. The girls are drawn from the range of backgrounds within South Africa and they all are aiming for academic excellence. Yet they are brought face to face with the issues their people encounter through the school’s social outreach programme. Girls work on projects both in down town Johannesburg and also on a five day residential project in Limpopo, 5 hours from home.

The intention of this programme is that the girls build up meaningful relationships with the people whom they are helping and able to reflect on the complexities that exist in a country in the process of transformation. In the words of their Head Girl for 2009, Keneilwe Ramaphosa, “We not only learn about giving back to the community, we learn compassion and a greater understanding of the world.”

 

A long holiday or even half term with a teenager can test the bonds of family relations.
A range of entertaining activities is offered but none is acceptable unless conducted in the company of other teenagers. At this point parents are forcibly reminded that the teenage years are about change and the shifting of loyalties. Youngsters need to start to carve out their own identities away from the powerful influence of their immediate family: the holiday dispute might just be part of this.

How does boarding fit into this family dynamic? Surely, some would argue, this is simply creating more distance between parents and teenager which will be difficult to resolve?
As the head of a boarding school for seven years, the mother of a boarding teenager, and having boarded myself, this range of experience has confirmed my view that boarding in fact assists teenagers to cope with the challenging aspects of transition from childhood to adulthood.

In order to establish their own individuality teenagers need to create some distance between themselves and their parents; they need to try out new ideas, argue for stances which may be radically different from the home view, listen to alternative perspectives on life. Away from home, students can experience independence from parents and gain from the insights of responsible adults whose role is to guide and steer their charges. The mix of nationalities that now form many boarding schools allows the pupil access to a much broader slant on life than might be gained by staying at home.

Breaking away from the security of home and the parental view is often unsettling for both parent and child. For that reason, friends take on a hugely significant role: they provide the emotional security as the bonds between child and parent are gradually loosened. The friendships formed at boarding school provide just this support and often last a lifetime.

Within the teen culture there is a desire to push at the boundaries, challenge parental views and experiment with the perceived temptations of adulthood. At boarding school the youngster is in a neutral environment where sensible boundaries are set to contain such tendencies. If youngsters fall into scrapes, the school will deal with this using their years of experience of managing such behaviour: the teenage years, after all, are their speciality.

Every summer this school says farewell to its graduates. They leave self assured, confident young women who have a clear idea of themselves and their goals in life. For many, the boarding environment has provided them with a safe territory in which to explore who they are and what they want to achieve: their parents and their school are enormously proud of them.

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