ISABEL COCKAYNE Boarding schools are the benchmark to teaching “life success”, delegates at a Norfolk conference were told last night. Education champion John West Burnham said that Britain's teachers had become good at schooling young people to meet standards and targets, instead of educating them.

ISABEL COCKAYNE

Boarding schools are the benchmark to teaching "life success", delegates at a Norfolk conference were told last night.

Education champion John West Burnham said Britain's teachers had become good at schooling young people to meet standards and targets instead of educating them but the boarding-school sector offered something different.

Prof West Burnham said: "What the boarding sector offers, irrespective of how it is funded, is education, which comes from the social side. We've been very good at schooling but not so good at educating."

Prof West Burnham was delivering a preview to the keynote speech he will make today at the State Boarding Schools' Association annual conference, being hosted by the country's largest boarding school, Wymondham College.

Delegates will discuss the future of boarding schools, covering topics including special educational needs and the law, the Government's "Every Child Matters" agenda and health issues.

Prof West Burnham, director of Professional Research and Development at the London Leadership Centre, told the EDP that the Government was becoming more interested in how boarding schools worked.

"The concern in Government is that after years of really working hard to improve schools, it is not really working any more. There have been real improvements but it is getting tougher and tougher to secure a good- quality education for every child. What is now beginning to come through is that the social side is as important as the academic in terms of success," he said. "Boarding schools intuitively focus on the social aspects . . . allowing education to take place."

Delegates also heard from Phillippa Leggate, chairman of the Boarding Schools Association, that the benefits of boarding schools were "immeasurable". Ms Leggate, head of Malvern Girls College, said: "If we can work together and galvanise support from the Government, we would be promoting a worthy cause. The way ahead is increasing the number of ways to promote these opportunities for developing the individual and work towards building up respect and value for the whole community."

Speaking later to the EDP, Ms Leggate said: "There is an enlivened interest in boarding schools. It is very much about educating the whole person, not just about passing exams. It is about providing opportunities, encouraging, supporting, cha-llenging and about learning to live and work alongside each other and in a community."