Queue for boarding

Those whose only experience of packing school trunks is via Mallory Towers, Kingscote or Hogwarts may be relaxed about the rise in boarding-school fees. But with annual fees at some of our best-known boarding schools approaching £40,000, traditional boarding families which don’t include a hedge-fund manager, prime minster or Kazakhstani oligarch may well be casting a nervous eye at the private day school down the road.

Or they, and others who prefer a broader social mix, may instead be applying to a different and little-known breed of boarding school. A state one, where tuition is free. Some charge for extended ‘day-boarding’ places (boarding life without the sleepovers), but full or weekly boarding costs from below £10,000 to around £15,000.

This is not some bright new wheeze: Adams’ Grammar in Shropshire dates from 1656, established by merchant haberdasher William Adams. What it doesn’t have are lavish private-school levels of funding. The boarding houses may be gorgeous Georgian, but they are also tatty in places. As housemaster Matthew Skeate points out, you won’t find a polo team at a state boarding school, and you may have to fish a frog out of the pool occasionally. Not that the pupils care. They are too busy kicking or throwing balls in the 100-acre grounds; or rehearsing for one of the big school productions (head Gary Hickey won a special commendation for ‘extraordinary work in drama’ in the 2000 National Teaching Awards); or marching with the CCF band (many students go on to careers in the forces).

For parents looking for a traditional boarding-school education, the Adams’ junior boarding house in a listed Georgian mansion surrounded by parkland has a reassuringly familiar feel. Boarding masters live on site with their own young families; one even has the private school cliché of a black labrador. ‘We are clearly a viable option for those who would once only have considered a private education,’ says Hickey.