Private schools are expanding their student residences to hold the circulation of incoming international students, concurrently, the Wesley College is getting its head on into another slam-bang, albeit neglected market: busy, professional, full-time working parents.
Hiring nannies and years of childcare or long weeks or months of visits to grandma's house are numerous events and manifestations that yield when your hardworking parents are working full-time. Parents of the same situation are then forced to search for alternative ways and age-suitable care for their adolescent children during the week.
Wesley College's principal, Dr. Helen Drennen said that not being at home is a significant dispute on the part of the parents. For parents cannot risk not knowing what is happening to their children. That is why she is offering a boarding program that functions from Monday to Friday only. In this manner, parents who are working full-time will have the opportunity to provide their children an age-appropriate care if they enroll them in the school's new $15 million Learning Residence.
According to The Age, parents, especially those who are both working usually suffers from worriment in the fear that their child's growth and development might be impacted by their absence from home. These happen in most cases to parents who are regularly engaged in a lot of travel.
How does it work? According to an article Headington, weekly boarders come to school on either Sunday or Monday morning and stay until Friday. They will return to their respective homes anew at weekends. Why weekly boarding? Apparently, there are multiple reasons into which why parents would rather let their children live at school from Monday to Friday. Aside from taking advantage on the situation, there are also other circumstances tackled upon in an article namely HMC, which tells that weekly boarding tends to have great appeal especially to students who love to join a school but unfortunately, their houses are too far away to be day students.
Glen Waverly Campus' ultramodern facility is pitched to parents living in the metropolitan areas whose children are of ages ranging from 10 to 12 years.
The school is disregarding stringent routines and harsh discipline that depicts that of an old boarding house. The said school is also offering full-time boarding in the residences bedizened with televisions, a piano, and a public dining area. Live-in qualified teachers, and youth workers are leading the benefits of the said program that offers additional tutorials, homework assistance, debating programs and cultural initiatives in the evenings.
Dr.Drennen stated in a statement that they are depositing much effort on the culture and environmental aspects. In line with this, he said that they a positive ethos and that they are working hard to make the boarders feel like it's a home away from home.
According to Professor Lyne Craig, director of the social policy research center at the University of NSW in an article The Age, a weekly boarding arrangement would result to an active outline between work and family time and that this program could be an assay to protect a job and prevent children from experiencing a broken family.
The new program will arise utterly in 2018 to accommodate 128 students, and since the opening in October, it has already more than 30 enrolments.
The residences are divided accordingly into two; wherein half will be accommodated by the domestic market and the remaining by international students who will also take up an English language preparatory program.
In an update statement by Richard Stokes, who is the executive director of the Australian Boarding School Association, enrolments for boarding schools have grown speedily, with currently about 23, 000 boarders- an augment of 3000 admissions five years ago.
In Victoria, 23 mostly urban school residences were offered at private schools; these includes Caulfield Grammar School, Methodist Ladies' College, and Scotch College.
In the article The Age, Professor Craig, according to her, parents who are working hard with smaller budgets were starved of options. She said that children whose ages are 13, 14 and 15 still requires monitoring and it's a subsisting issue.
Together with the $30,000 tuition fee, Wesley's boarding fee is $24,500 for the year.
Allistair McLean, a full-time business owner, and consultant and his wife, Rosemary, a lawyer, sent their son Hugh to Wesley's boarding program from Monday to Friday. Rosemary said that it took some time adjusting to the situation, but they spend their time bonding over social media and catch up when he returns home on the weekend.
Rosemary believed in the essentiality of showing children that work was also a priority. For her, it is vital for young men and women to see that women are pursuing a prosperous career. She also said in her statement that weekly boarding is an opportunity for kids to avoid the negative impact of having helicopter parents and that it also yields to a healthy relationship despite the distance between parents and children.
