COME FLY WITH ME

Robin Fletcher Chief Executive BSA and BSA Group

In 1921 the aviation world witnessed the launch of the Supermarine Seagull, an amphibian biplane flying boat designed and produced by the British aircraft manufacturer Supermarine. A century later, and the same community is welcoming to the skies the Dassault Falcon 6X, a large, long-range business jet under development by Dassault Aviation in France. Both aircraft describe the evolution of powered flight and there is no doubt that the skills and training required to fly the Falcon 6X will be longer and more complex than that experienced by 1920s flying boat pilots.

Aircraft and boarding houses are not the same, obviously, but there is some comparison in the skills and training of those who pilot them. One hundred years ago, Housemasters and Housemistresses at boarding schools usually delivered pastoral care for boarders with little or no training, whereas today it is a requirement of schools in England at least that house staff receive annual training. And this requirement will increase if and when the awaited changes to the National Minimum Standards for Boarding are finally introduced.

So, if modern pilots are required to train longer to perform more complex tasks than their ancestors, it suggests the boarding sector should think ahead to what sort of ‘pilots’ schools are going to need over the next five, 10 or 20 years. Will the house staff of tomorrow still, in the main, be teachers who take on boarding duties or will there be more (by necessity or design) who enter the profession from other career paths, such as health care, youth services or the military?

Will house staff continue, like junior doctors, to be expected to juggle a huge range of competing demands every week, while being accountable to students, parents and the government for the professional health and safety of dozens of young people in their care. training continue to expand, as it has since the advent of courses on drugs, mental health and safeguarding in the past decade? And how will skills development be accessed – internally, on-line, in person and/or with external support from expert providers?

At this point, as schools continue to dust themselves down from the disruptive effects of COVID-19, we don’t know the answers to many of these questions. But these questions need to be addressed and answers discussed.

There is some irony that despite the advances in aviation technology and pilot training, the phrases ‘boarding an aircraft’ and ‘boarding pass’ endure. Thankfully ‘boarding’ remains the enduring word of our schools, but underneath that constant we must recognise that pastoral care for boarders in 2021 is technically more advanced than a century ago and the demands on those at the cockpit controls greater than ever.