The Main Course - Pastoral

Student Life at the College

The College fully understands that it can be very difficult for students who travel many hundreds, often thousands of miles to continue their education in another country where life may seem very different. The International College is committed in everything it does to ensure that your son or daughter is helped to settle in our school, to be happy and to develop as an individual. We are also keen to learn from other cultures and to foster a mutual respect between people from all over the world.

Aspects of life at the College

Boarding

The International College is a 100% boarding school. Girls and boys are provided with separate boarding houses at the College. Each house has its own resident staff who are there to supervise and assist (help) the resident students.

Each house has its own common room area and kitchenettes where students can make hot drinks and snacks for themselves. While each house is different in size and in character, all are either new buildings, or have been attractively and comfortably refurbished. Each house has a Junior Common Room (JCR) committee to ensure students’ views are taken into account.

Note: Students who are enrolled late on a course, or during the school year, are sometimes offered temporary accommodation with carefully selected host families. This only applies to a very small number of students who are offered a place in a boarding house as soon as one becomes available.
(Top)

Food

The College has an attractive dining room on its main campus. All meals are provided in this dining room, including breakfast, lunch and dinner. The College has its own catering staff and catering manageress. A varied and healthy diet is offered. Everyday there is a good range of foods, and all meat products are carefully labelled for the benefit of students who may need to avoid eating certain meats for religious or dietary reasons. There is a student dining hall committee, chaired by a member of staff, to ensure that student views about food are made known. Staff also eat in the dining room where an “English only” rule is applied to help language development.
(Top)

Activities

On Wednesday afternoons all students, apart from those following the one-year or final year of the GCSE programme, take part in an activities programme led by members of the teaching staff. Each term a range of options is available for students. A typical term might offer Horseriding, Golf, Dry Slope Skiing, Squash, Gym, Cookery, Digital Photography, Board Games or Climbing Club. Students may change their activity choice each term. The College magazine, published in June each year, contains many articles arising from the activity programme.
(Top)

Sport

The College offers a full range of sporting activities which are available to students. Students up to and including Year 10 have compulsory sport nearly every day and students in their GCSE year are still expected to undertake exercise on a regular basis. Although the College has many sporting teams, we also believe sport has recreational and health benefits which do not need to be linked to performing at a high level. Examples of sports on offer include football, basketball, netball, rounders, tennis, cricket, swimming, squash and volleyball.
(Top)

Weekends

Since all students are boarders, the College tries to make Saturdays and Sundays interesting. A varied programme of compulsory (students must do) and optional (students can choose) activities and excursions are offered, ranging from cultural visits to towns such as Salisbury, expeditions to cities such as Bath, ice-skating or cinema visits. There are often sport matches, particularly against other boarding schools, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons.

Like most British boarding schools, the College has lessons on Saturday mornings, and there are also some supervised study periods on Sunday. Sports matches often take place at the weekend. Each year there are usually two concerts, and other house drama or musical productions. These are often staged at weekends.
(Top)

Religion and culture

Since students at the College come from many different religious backgrounds, the College does not have a particular religious affiliation. Students at the College, therefore, are not required to attend Christian services, although this is a common feature of many traditional British boarding schools. Students are encouraged to maintain their own religious practices. The College acknowledges the existence of a spiritual dimension to life, and recognises the main festivals of all the world’s major religions. Similarly the College recognises the rich variety of cultures that exists at the International College and is keen that everyone learns from each other.
(Top)

Recreation

The College provides recreational resources for its students. There are televisions, table football, and even play stations (!) in the House common rooms for students in the College. However, even during the recreational time for students there are still members of staff on duty, either on the College campus, or in the boarding houses.
(Top)

Health and Welfare

All good boarding schools accept that they are responsible for their students for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the College we do more than this. We never forget that our parents may live many thousands of kilometres from Sherborne and we pay great attention to the health and welfare of the children in our care. We look after your children just as carefully as if they were our own. We have two residential matrons who work at the College. If a child does not feel well, he or she goes to see Matron. Usually she can deal with everyday problems, the sort of problems a mother will deal with at home. But if Matron thinks that the case may be more serious, she will take the child to the School Doctor. At all times our students can be sure of receiving the best medical attention. There are separate areas in the sanatorium (school hospital) for boys and girls should they need to stay there overnight or for a few days.
(Top)