RAISING THE BAR THE NEW NATIONAL MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR BOARDING SCHOOLS

Boarding schools in England were first subjected to a regime of inspection by local authority social services departments in the 1990s. By the turn of the millennium, a consensus had formed that a common inspection framework and set of minimum standards were required. The Boarding Schools’ Association was a key part of the working group which produced the first set of National Minimum Standards for Boarding Schools (NMS) in 2002 and helped train the first boarding school inspectors.

Twenty years on, all boarding schools in England belonging to an Independent Schools’ Council (ISC) association have their boarding inspected by the Independent Schools’ Inspectorate (ISI). State boarding schools, plus any ‘non-association’ independent schools, are inspected by Ofsted, with each having their own inspection framework, but both using the NMS as their baseline.