Social, Emotional Well-Being and Mental Health Implications for Adolescents Transitioning to Secondary Boarding School

IntroductionFor boarding student, primary to secondary school transition involves coping with multiple changes simultaneously. For many this transition will incorporate their first time away from home as well as their first encounter with a secondary school environment. Not only do they have to negotiate new teachers, academic expectations and social contexts, but boarding students have to also adjust to new living conditions and duty of care arrangements that underpin operational and organisational structure of boarding schools. However, for boarding student, perhaps most challenging aspect of primary to secondary school transition is necessity to operate autonomously while dislocated from support and familiarity of family with which they previously had unlimited access. The boarding student forms a unique subgroup of adolescents given they spend formative years of their adolescence intermittently living away from their parents.Current data collection frameworks and lack of a national student identification system mean that it is difficult to extrapolate precise number of boarding students in Australia. However, an estimated 23,000 boarding students attended 172 government and non-government boarding schools nationally in 2010 (1). While some have provided a historical synthesis of Australian boarding schools, it is valuable to provide a brief synopsis of boarding schools in contemporary Australia. Boarding schools vary in length of establishment, organisational structure and size, and each has its own unique cultural and social nuances. Several studies point to distal influence of English Public School system and a tendency of some Australian boarding schools to emulate traditions of former. North American research has defined boarding schools as those institutions which have 80 to 90 per cent of overall school population living on campus in dormitory-style residential halls for duration of schooling year (2). However, boarding schools in Australia are a different type of educational institution compared to their overseas counterparts. Rather than an emphasis placed on ratio of boarding students to overall student population of a school, designation of boarding school in Australia has been argued to originate from a benevolent educational philosophy. A philosophy in Western Australia (WA) that has historically sought to enable families to overcome tyranny of vast geographical distances and sparsely populated regional areas (3).Contemporary Australian boarding schools are predominantly non-government secondary schools that have on campus residential facilities and a live-in student community for duration of school year. Of scant literature, most has been inclined to explore socio-historical aspects of Australian boarding schools and their organisational culture or saliency of social networks and friendships to boarding students. A few have examined impact of homesickness on boarding students. However, despite some investigating personality traits and academic outcomes, little attention has been given to understanding emotional and mental health of boarding students as they endeavour to cope with challenge of schooling away from home. Coping has been described as the cognitive and affective responses used by an individual to deal with problems encountered in everyday life (4). What is more, current indicators used by government departments and education systems to measure successful primary to secondary transition (e.g., academic achievement, attendance and retention rates) do not actually provide insight into social and emotional wellbeing and mental health of boarding students. Nor into lived experience or implications of transitioning to a secondary boarding school during adolescence.The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines mental health as a state of wellbeing in which individuals realise their own abilities, can cope with normal stresses of life, work productively and fruitfully, and are able to make a positive contribution to their community (5). …