Prep Boarding Conference 2026
🏷️ From £110
🎧 Prep boarding staff, senior leaders, marketing and admissions
📍 Dragon School, Oxford.
BSA Prep Boarding Conference 2026 is a one-day professional development event for educators and leaders in prep school boarding. The conference covers best practices in providing outstanding academic and pastoral care, managing pupil transitions, and key operational areas such as admissions, compliance, and staff retention. Expert-led sessions and a collaborative round table discussion will provide practical strategies and insights, with a special focus on the crucial topic of pupil wellbeing and sleep optimisation.
Training topics will include:
- Developing outstanding academic and pastoral provision, with a focus on supporting a smooth transition to senior boarding.
- Creating a strategic roadmap for marketing, admissions, compliance, and staff retention in prep boarding schools.
- Applying strategies to improve pupil wellbeing through optimised sleep environments and routines.
Learning Outcomes
Participants will be able to:
- Identify and apply best practices for delivering outstanding academic, pastoral, and boarding provision in a prep school setting.
- Implement strategies that effectively support pupils in their transition from prep to senior boarding.
- Develop a strategic roadmap for marketing, admissions, and compliance that drives enrolment growth and meets inspection standards.
- Recruit and retain high-quality staff and pupils by addressing key challenges in the boarding sector.
- Apply practical techniques to promote healthier sleep and improve the overall wellbeing of boarding pupils.
Programme:
09:30 – 10:00 Registration & refreshments
Networking and arrival.
10:00 – 11.00 Belonging: Why Prep Boarding Matters
Setting out the opportunity for prep and junior boarding and asking: what do we want children to say about having boarded with us?
What makes a boarding experience genuinely exceptional for a younger child? An exploration of belonging, relationships, independence, adventure and the small everyday moments that create great boarding.
Speaker: Emma Goldsmith, Head, The Dragon School, Oxford
Emma is the twelfth person to lead Dragon School Oxford, a co-educational prep school, since it was founded in 1877 and the first female to do so. Emma joined the Dragon after a successful few years as Head of Winchester House Prep. Emma taught at Oakham and Rugby Schools and went on to become Deputy Head at Bloxham School where she also worked as Housemistress, setting up the first girls’ boarding house. Emma is a board member of IAPS. She is an experienced governor having been on the board of Cheltenham College and is currently a governor of Wellington College and Gordonstoun. She is also host of the podcast ‘The Educational DilEmma’.
11:00 – 12:00 UKVI Compliance: Being inspection ready
An update on the latest UKVI rules, regulations and inspections. An opportunity to put your questions and issues to the BSA Legal team.
Speaker: Kate Hollyer, Director, BSA Legal
Kate advises independent day and boarding schools on the immigration law governing their international student recruitment. She leads the legal function across Abitas Group, heads its SRA-regulated practice BSA Legal, and has practised in UK immigration law for over 15 years.
Her work covers Student sponsor licence compliance at senior leadership and governance level, and she acts for schools facing UKVI enforcement action. For schools sponsoring under-18s, immigration compliance is safeguarding, and much of her practice sits where sponsor duties and safeguarding frameworks meet. She has lived in boarding schools throughout her career.
Kate represents the school sector on the Home Office’s Future Border and Immigration System (FBIS) Education Advisory Group and the UK Agent Quality Framework Steering Group, and the boarding sector at the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Students. She is a qualified solicitor and a member of ILPA.
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch, networking and boarding tour
Optional boarding-house/school tour if the venue permits.
13:00 – 13:45 People Make the Place: Building Boarding Teams with Energy and Staying Power
Explore recruitment, induction, workload, rotas, supervision, professional development, recognition and creating a culture in which staff can enjoy boarding rather than simply administer it.
Speakers:
Liz Hutchings, Registrar, Head of Boarding, Junior King’s School, Canterbury
Marcus Faulkner, Head of Boarding, The Dragon School, Oxford
Augusta Faulkner, Head of Boarding, The Dragon School, Oxford
13:45 – 14:30 Prep Forum Meeting & Round-table discussion
14:30 – 15:00 Refreshments and networking
15:00 – 16:00 Safe, Seen and Heard: Safeguarding in the Real Life of a Boarding House
Move beyond “being inspection ready” to creating a culture in which safeguarding is visible in everyday decisions.
Speaker: Dale Wilkins, Executive Director, Scotland/Wales and Accredited/Compliance, BSA
Dale joined the BSA during Summer 2017 with responsibility for safeguarding and standards. In July 2019 he also assumed responsibility for the BSA’s training programme, including both day seminars and accredited training courses. Dale leads on all safeguarding and inspection matters for the BSA, including managing the Commitment to Care Charter, the annual Safeguarding Conference, the Safeguarding Forum. He has also developed a process of BSA Accreditation for our overseas members.
For 31 years Dale was a boarding practitioner. After boarding positions at Norwich School and Tettenhall College, Dale became a Housemaster at Old Swinford Hospital in 1992, and was promoted to Deputy Head in 2007, and subsequently also DSL. He has also been a multi-agency trainer for the Dudley Safeguarding Children’s Board and has been closely involved in inspection in state and independent boarding since 2002. Dale had previously been a BSA course tutor since 1998 and developed the BSA Self-Assessment Toolkit.
16:00 Conference ends
