Shore Boarding Philosophy - Sydney Church of England Grammar School

Sydney Church of England Grammar School – Shore has been a school which has welcomed and benefited from its boarding community since the first boys were enrolled in July 1889. Shore’s governing Councils and its Headmasters have embraced the significance of boarding as part of the essential, binding fabric of the life of the School. Boarding is a critical element of the School’s culture bringing to Shore a residential community of boys, masters, their families and support staff enunciating a true and living context to the School’s Christian foundation.

This Christian foundation has at its heart the relationship that people can have with God. A central part of this life together is one of service in the context of community; this will involve service to God as well as each other. Our boarding community promotes such virtues as generosity, kindness, self-sacrifice and humility. Shore is a school that seeks to teach its students not only about the Christian faith but also to give its students the opportunity to thrive and make the most of every opportunity, to feel safe and to, very importantly, have fun. Therefore, boarding at Shore gives the school a unique opportunity to model what living together and serving each other will look like in this broad Christian context.

The boarding community as it lives out the values of the School is both a generator of and a protector of the culture of the School. This is due in part to the extent of time spent by boarders in the school but more importantly due to the ésprit de corps which develops in a boarding house more powerfully than in a day house. At Shore the academic culture shift in boarding helped to drive the broader movement in the wider school; the participation in the arts by the boarders raised acceptability and profile and of course the history of the School demonstrates the great contributions that boarders have always made to the sporting ethos of Shore.