b'Welcome Welcome to the fourth edition of The Good Schools Guide, Boarding Schools. Choosing a school for your child can be an overwhelming and time-consuming experiencenever more so when that school is also going to be their home from home. Our aim in publishing this book is to furnish parents with as much information as possible and to provide insights that they wont nd in prospectuses, websites or on slick school open days. Our focus is not on lists of facilities or league table positions (although these, and exam results, are always covered in our reviews); we bring you the real inside scoop on what its actually like to be a pupil at one of our schools; its ethos, culture and unique personality. It goes without saying that the schools we write about are good, but no school is perfect; a school that would suit one type of child might not be the right choice for another. In a world where marketing seems to make every school look similarly awless, our reviews help parents cut through the gloss and answer the question: would my child be happy here? How do we do this? Our writersall parents themselvestravel the length and breadth of the country to visit the best boarding schools in the UK. The process is rigorous, with unfettered one-to-one interviews with head teachers, senior leadership teams and house parents. We are privileged to be allowed unsupervised conversations with current pupils as well as their parents who we nd through our own networksschools know we speak with their parent body, but not to whomso we can be sure of getting the warts and all truth. We go out of our way to avoid talking exclusively to prefects, scholars and sports captains (although we do like their opinions too!). As a result, the portrait we paint for our readers is accurate and insightful. No parental dissatisfaction is left unquestioned, no school lunch (always in the school dining room alongside pupils) left untasted. During the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 IX'