What a boarding day actually looks like, hour by hour

Parents imagine boarding either as a hostel with a lock on the gate or as a film set. It is neither. It is a timetable, and the timetable is the point.

5.45 am — Wake up and PT. Housemasters wake the floor. Physical training and yoga happen on the ground before the heat sets in, which in a Lucknow summer is the only sensible hour for it.

7.30 am — Breakfast. One common dining hall for every house. The weekly menu is set with the school doctor and pinned on the notice board, so a parent can read it on a visiting Sunday.

8.15 am — Assembly and classes. Morning assembly, then the academic day, with a games period inside the timetable rather than bolted onto the end of it.

1.30 pm — Lunch and rest. Boarders go back to their houses. Junior classes have a supervised rest hour, which sounds indulgent until you have watched a nine-year-old at 4 pm without one.

4.00 pm — Games and activities. Cricket, football, basketball, athletics, music, dance and art. The rule is simple: at four o'clock every boarder is on a ground or in a room, not in a dormitory.

6.30 pm — Supervised prep. Two hours of study with a subject teacher present on the floor. This is the part of a boarding school that either works or does not.

9.00 pm — Dinner, house meeting, lights out. Dinner together, a short house meeting, and lights out by ten for the junior wing.

The structure is not there to be strict. It is there so a child does not have to build self-discipline out of thin air at thirteen.