Keen to take advantage of the wraparound teaching, pastoral and social provision provided by the boarding sector, but unable to afford the £20,000 needed for leading independent schools, growing numbers of parents are now eyeing up the 34 boarding schools in the state sector.

These charge about £7,000 a year because parents only pay for boarding, not tuition.

Demand for the 5,000 state boarding places in England has increased by 50 per cent in the past four years, according to the Boarding Schools’ Association (BSA) with schools now three or four times oversubscribed. Demand for sixth-form places is particularly acute.

Hilary Moriarty, national director of the BSA, has detected a sea change in attitudes towards boarding school, particularly for weekly boarding.

“The notion of parents and children working hard all week and enjoying quality time together at weekends is quite seductive. This is particularly so when parents work late in the evening or commute big distances, while children reach an age when they have social and extra-curricular demands of their own in the evenings.

“Parents are becoming acclimatised to the idea of sending a child to boarding school and less fearful of being branded a bad parent,” she said.

The state boarding sector is undergoing a profound transformation, thanks largely to a £25 million expansion programme. Wymondham College in Norfolk has secured £9.8 million of funding for a building programme that includes 115 ensuite study bedrooms.

A further £5 million has been allocated to Brymore School in Somerset to build a boarding house and refurbish an old one, Burford in Oxfordshire to increase its provision and to Lancaster Royal Grammar to replace existing provision.

Old Swinford Hospital, in Worcestershire, has doubled its boarding places since 2000 to 44 for Year 7 pupils and a further 15 in Year 9.

Melvyn Roffe, the headmaster, said that state boarding was an old-fashioned solution to a modern problem.

“For the amount of money parents would have to spend on childcare and running them around activities after school, it is extremely good value.

“State boarding schools produce good results, which may have something to do with the lifestyle they offer. It helps children to develop their independence and parents regard it as preparation for university life,” he said at the State Boarding Schools Association conference yesterday.

Norman Hoare, head of St George’s, a mixed state boarding school in Hertfordshire, said that the 20 boarding places for Year 7 pupils were now four times oversubscribed.

“Why should parents pay so much for boarding places in the independent sector, when they can get such good quality in the state sector?” he said.

The reversal in the fortunes in most state boarding schools follows moves to extend the school day by encouraging day schools to offer both breakfast and after school provision.

It also coincides with plans to offer more state boarding places for children in care in new academies.

One boarding academy, Kingshurst, is already under way in Solihull.

At Gratton Park, a state boarding school in Reigate, Surrey, Paul Spencer Ellis, the head, has developed a hybrid day-boarding system.

“We offer 30 places in Year 7 for ‘day boarders’. They can attend school from 7.30am until their age group boarders go to bed and have all meals included in the fee, which is only £1,100 per term.

For September 2006 he had more than 100 applicants. “This shows how parents appreciate the longer day and the care of a boarding school,” he said.

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