mAkinG oUr mArk AS new hoUSePArentS

Two terms in, two new Houseparents share how they’ve explored and established a successful boarding environment.

When we first joined Lockers Park as teachers, we both loved the boarding element of the school, and how it gives our community an international, family-like feel, not to mention opening up amazing opportunities for our pupils. It was only a matter of time before we wanted to take on a Houseparent role.

In January 2021, shortly after hearing of our success in securing the role of Houseparents for Summer 2021, the opportunity arose to attend the BSA’s course, ‘Taking on a new Boarding House’ run by BSA Senior Consultant, Mark Robinson. The course proved to be an invaluable source of professional development for those new to a boarding role.

It quite quickly became clear from the opening session of the course that our most crucial task was to create our boarding ethos and discover what is important to us. We were asked, ‘If I don’t know what you’re selling, why would I buy it?’ We decided to research other Boarding Houses in the country to brainstorm and decide upon the attributes which were important to us and the environment we would like to create.

Now almost a year on from attending that course, and over two terms into running a Boarding House, we’ve learnt a huge amount, and are proud to have established a successful boarding ethos, that is generating great results for our Boarding House, and is popular with our pupils.

Our take on the foundations of success to boarding at Lockers Park fall into three categories: creating a family feel; building a pathway to independence; and, encouraging boarding for all.

Lucy and Ryan Newman Houseparents Lockers Park

A FAMILY FEEL For boarders to thrive whilst living in school, they need the boarding staff and wider community to be their family. We’re fortunate to have an experienced team around us, and our purposefully small community means that each child can get a great amount of personalised attention and support each day, just as they would at home.

This family feeling grew within our House when we recently welcomed our baby son, Kit, into the world, in our first term as Houseparents. We became new parents in more ways than one! Kit has quickly become a firm favourite in the House and on a recent weekend walk to the local park and sweet shop, our boarders waited patiently for their turn to push the pram! It is so important to us and our boarders, that

they feel that they are a part of our family, as well as the school community as a whole.

A PATHWAY TO INDEPENDENCE Both of us have a background in professional golf; and in professional sport, goals and paving a pathway to success is necessary for continual improvement. So we have introduced a pathway system to help the pupils in our care develop their independence and skills, whilst providing irregular and non-boarders with an exciting reason to give it a try.

Our Boarding Pathway is achieving great results and generating much enthusiasm from the pupils. Every boy in the school has their own Boarding Passport and each year group contains seven goals or targets to get ticked off. As an example, a year 8 pupil is tasked with leading a boarding meeting and hosting an event for younger boys. When a pupil successfully completes all their targets by the end of the school year, they are invited to our Boarding Bonanza event.

Alongside this, we have changed the reward system in the Boarding House to include tangible prizes from our Boarding Box when boarding stars are achieved for good behaviour, citizenship and kindness, in line with our school’s code of conduct.

Winston Churchill said ‘to improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often’; these new initiatives have brought about excitement and enthusiasm in the Boarding House, and we will look to continually make changes and bring new ideas to ensure we are ever evolving for our pupils.

After two terms, we have identified the need to offer an extensive activity and events programme to cater for all our pupils’ personalities and characters.

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New events targeting different age groups and interests have proven popular and have attracted first time boarders into the House as part of our flexi programme. In fact, 82% of all pupils in year 5 and above stayed during the Autumn Term.

‘House of Hogwarts’, ‘Halloween Havoc’ and ‘Battle of the Boys’ have been some of our popular nights, and opening up our weekend trips for all day pupils, has brought new life and variety to the House. We are now holding evening activities such as debating and Warhammer as well as bringing back a train room within the Boarding House—an activity with great history at Lockers Park. These events are in addition to the traditionally popular nights of ‘Dark Tower’ and ‘The Feast.’

So far in our journey of leadership and management of a Boarding House, creating a family atmosphere, building pupils’ independence, and introducing a wide range of events to encourage boarding across the school, have been top of our priorities. But, how do we continue to succeed and develop? In our case, two Houseparents may be better than one when it comes to bringing ideas and making plans for the future. However, it is with the teamwork and support of the wider staffing body and community that a plan can really be put into place, new ideas can be shared and an environment can really flourish.

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