A young attendee carries home a collection of school information, reflecting the bigger decision facing many country families: how to widen a child’s opportunities without leaving their community behind. Photo: Amanda Ferrari.
For some country families, sending a child to boarding school can be the decision that allows everyone else to remain at home.
When secondary education is unavailable nearby, subject choices are limited or distance education no longer suits a child, families can find themselves considering whether to relocate altogether.
Boarding Schools Expo director Amanda Ferrari believes making boarding more understandable and attainable can help established families remain in the communities where they live and work.
“I am on a mission to stop families leaving the towns they’re from,” Ferrari said at the Boarding Schools Expo at Moree Town Hall on Thursday, July 23.
Ferrari has spent 22 years taking the expo to regional and remote centres across New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, giving families the chance to speak directly with schools before making what can be a major educational, financial and emotional decision.
“For many people, depending on where they live, boarding school is going to be part of their story because they either don’t have access to face-to-face education or the access they do have is rather limited,” she said.
In some communities, there is no local secondary school. In others, students may reach their senior years and find not every subject they want to study is available face-to-face.
For families using distance education, there can also come a time when a child wants to learn alongside other students.
“For those families who are so remote that they do distance education, at some point they really want their children to go and learn alongside their peers,” Ferrari said.
Boarding is not the right answer for every family, and it is not always the only option. Some students continue with distance education, some remain at local schools and others move between different models as their needs change.
But for families who might otherwise consider leaving their town, boarding can offer another path, allowing a child to study elsewhere without uprooting the entire household.
Ferrari said the departure of established families could be felt well beyond the school gate.
When parents move for their children’s education, country towns can also lose tradespeople, workers, business owners and families who have built their lives there.
Her argument is not that boarding can solve the wider challenges facing regional communities. It is that access to it can remove one reason a family may feel compelled to leave.
The cost of letting go
The practical case for boarding is only one part of the decision.
Ferrari said cost was usually the first concern families raised. Many schools offered scholarships and bursaries, but fees could still place boarding beyond the reach of some households.
Then came the emotional reality of sending a child away.
“That element of letting go and that grief, it’s not a natural thing,” she said.
Ferrari did not attend boarding school herself but later decided it was the option that made the most sense for her own children. That experience now informs her work with parents preparing for the same transition.
The decision may be shaped by geography, but it remains deeply personal. Families are not simply choosing a school. They are deciding how much childhood will continue at home, how often they will see one another and whether a child is ready to live within another community.
Necessity, choice and changing pathways
The Armidale School representative Joe Nielsen described boarding as an “unfortunate necessity” for some families living in areas without access to a nearby high school.
For those students, the question is not necessarily which local school to attend. It may be how to reach secondary education at all.
For others, the decision develops more gradually.
Calrossy Anglican School representative Lisa Hinwood said some students began secondary school through live online distance education, following a normal timetable with subject teachers, before moving into boarding for their senior years.
“What we’re seeing is a lot of kids actually want to stay at home a little bit longer,” she said.
“But when they are getting those harder HSC subjects, they’re transferring into a boarding school.”
That pathway challenges the idea that families must make one irreversible decision at the beginning of Year 7. A student may remain at home while younger, move into boarding when subjects become more specialised, or continue with another model altogether.
The choice can change as a child’s academic needs, maturity and family circumstances change.
Possibilities not yet imagined
For some families, the attraction of boarding lies not in necessity but in access to opportunities a child may not yet know exist.
Ravenswood’s Director of Boarding pointed to fields such as robotics and animation, interests a student might discover only after being given the chance to try them.
“You can explore your interests,” she said.
“Sometimes you don’t even think of things because they’re not available to you.”
That is one of the quieter effects of geography.
A student cannot ask for an opportunity they have never encountered. Interests are shaped not only by ability, but by the teachers, facilities, competitions and examples placed within reach.
For one child, that opportunity may be music. For another, it may be agriculture, swimming, drama, technology or a particular senior subject.
The issue is not that regional students lack ambition. It is that distance can narrow the range of things they are able to imagine for themselves.
Beyond lessons and timetables
School representatives also spoke about what students could gain outside formal classes.
Abbotsleigh Head of Boarding Katie White said the value of boarding extended to sport, excursions, activities and weekend experiences, as well as academic learning.
“We know we do very well academically, so we know we’ve got it right in the classroom, but it’s those things that happen beyond the classroom as well,” White said.
Other representatives spoke about independence, responsibility and the challenge of learning to live alongside others.
PLC Armidale representative Vanessa Arundale said boarding could help children become more self-sufficient while widening their friendship networks.
“I think boarding is a great opportunity for children to discover independence,” she said.
Arundale said her daughter, an only child who used casual boarding, valued the sense of “sisterhood” and had taken greater responsibility for her own study.
It was one example of a broader theme raised by schools across the expo: the importance of helping students feel supported while living away from home.
Representatives described boarding houses as close communities where students could form friendships, learn to manage daily life and receive support from staff and teachers.
Those relationships mattered because families were not only comparing subjects, facilities and academic pathways. They were also considering who would know their child, notice when help was needed and make the adjustment to life away from home more manageable.
Finding the right fit
John Paul College representative Dianne Hildebrand said choosing a boarding school involved the whole family and depended on finding a community that reflected its values.
“We all do something a little bit different, we all have our own culture,” she said.
“The families just need to find that school that fits with their family values.”
She said it remained important for students to preserve their connection to Moree and their home communities while establishing another community at school.
The aim was not to replace home, but to create an environment in which a student could live, learn and belong while remaining part of the family and place they came from.
The schools represented in Moree differed in scale, character and educational focus. Some emphasised agriculture, sport, music or academic support. Others promoted smaller boarding houses, city access or particular teaching models.
But the strongest message was not that one school or pathway suited everyone. It was that families needed enough information to make a decision shaped by their child, their circumstances and the kind of community in which that child was likely to thrive.
A decision shaped by distance
No one at the expo suggested boarding was the right answer for every child.
But throughout the interviews, one truth surfaced again and again: for some country families, geography shapes educational choices long before academic ability ever does.
A child may live too far from a secondary school. A senior subject may not be available. A particular interest may require facilities, teaching or competition that cannot be provided nearby.
Those realities do not make boarding simple.
Families still have to weigh cost, separation, readiness and whether a school feels right. They have to decide what their child may gain, what the household will give up and how they will maintain the bonds of home across distance.
That is why Ferrari believes face-to-face conversations matter.
“It’s really important when families are making these massive decisions to be able to do that face-to-face and make a connection with someone,” she said.
The Moree expo brought schools into the same room as the families considering them, allowing parents to compare academic pathways, costs, support and opportunities face-to-face.
But the larger question extended beyond the hall.
For some rural families, a decision about where one child goes to school can help determine where everyone else continues to call home.
