Methodology

Which schools are included

A school is listed only if it currently offers genuine boarding accommodation alongside primary or secondary education, including sixth form or pre-university years. Independent, public or state, international, academic military, faith-based and secular schools qualify, as do schools that take both day and boarding pupils. A school with several campuses is listed per campus, because boarding can differ by campus, age and year group.

Not listed: universities and colleges, summer and language camps, day-only schools, standalone student accommodation, therapeutic residential treatment centres, wilderness programmes, and institutions marketed mainly as correctional programmes. We do not have an “online boarding” category: online education and residential schooling are different things.

The directory covers seven countries: the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Switzerland. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom; the Republic of Ireland is listed separately.

Where facts come from

Facts are read from the school’s own website and admissions, boarding and fee pages, from published fee schedules, and from official registers, inspection reports and accreditor or association records. Third-party directories, rankings and review sites may help us find schools but are never the source of a fact, and we do not copy any directory.

For every fact we keep the page it came from, a verbatim quote and the date it was read. A script later fetches each page again and checks the quote is still there. A fee whose quote can no longer be found is withheld; a school whose boarding statement can no longer be found is taken off the site until an editor re-checks it. Pages we cannot read automatically (for example PDFs) are marked as not machine-checked rather than assumed correct.

Unknown means unknown

If a school does not publish something, or we could not read it, the page says Not confirmed. We never read “not published” as “not offered”, and we never fill gaps with estimates, averages or the practice of similar schools. We do not publish parent reviews, star ratings, acceptance rates, exam results or university destinations.

Ages, genders and years

We keep separate: the ages a school teaches; the ages eligible for boarding; the genders the school admits; the genders boarding is open to; day places; and boarding places. Year and grade names are kept exactly as each country and school uses them (Year 9, Grade 9, Form III, Fifth Year). We do not convert one system into another’s “equivalent”.

Fees and comparison

Each fee row keeps the original amount, currency, billing period, academic year, whether it includes tuition, who it applies to (all, domestic, international) and which year groups it covers. We compute an annual boarding total only when the school’s own figures support it: either one all-in figure published per year (or per term with the number of terms stated by the school), or a tuition figure plus a boarding charge that match in currency, academic year, audience and year groups. The basis is shown next to the number. Day-pupil figures never become a boarding price. We do not convert currencies, and the comparison tool only places fees side by side as comparable when currency and academic year match.

Statuses are kept apart

• Research checked: our own reading of the school’s official sources on the review date.
• School claimed: an editor verified that a representative can speak for the school. A claim does not edit the research record.
• School-submitted information: a reviewed change that came from the school.
• Sponsored: a paid placement, always labelled.

A paid listing does not receive a “Research checked” label, and none of these statuses is an endorsement. Membership of an association is shown as membership; it is never presented as accreditation, and accreditation is never presented as a guarantee of safety or suitability.

Best boarding schools pages

Our Best boarding schools pages are unranked shortlists. “Best” depends on the child, so we do not number or score schools. A campus is shortlisted if its boarding entry ages, a calculable annual fee, admissions information, an international-applicant statement and an inspection or accreditation record can all be checked. That tells you how verifiable a school is, not how good it is. Order is alphabetical, and neither sponsorship nor school submissions can add a school or move it.

Geography and indexing

A country, state, province, region, canton or city page exists only when at least one published school is located there; we do not create empty archives. A destination page is offered to search engines once it has at least three listings; with fewer it remains available to visitors but is marked noindex. Searches, filter combinations, comparison pages and forms are never submitted to search engines.

Photographs and logos

We use photographs only when we hold the right to: open-licence images (credited on the image credits page) or images supplied by schools. A photograph of a place is labelled as such and never stands in for a particular school. Where no licensed image exists, a neutral placeholder is shown. School logos come from the school’s own site and identify the school.

Corrections and review

Every record carries a review date. Records not reviewed for twelve months are flagged for re-checking. Anyone can report a correction; we check it against official sources before changing anything, and changes are logged.

Limits

Coverage is incomplete and uneven between countries. Some school websites block automated readers, publish fees only in forms we cannot read, or do not publish fees at all. Listings are information, not advice, and are not a guarantee of admission, a visa or any outcome.