Guiding and Counselling are an integral part of our School.
We offer full boarding. Boarding students enjoy a vibrant and homely atmosphere within the boarding house and live in modern and comfortable rooms. We believe that boarding has many advantages, not least of which are learning about the tolerance, compromise, kindness and responsibility so necessary when living in a community. We expect all boarders to play a full part in the school’s boarding community and to seek to improve it for the good of everyone. Boarding staff set standards and enforce rules for the good of all, but with a lightness of touch.
They are dedicated to providing support, care and a framework in which the boys can develop as individuals. Boarding staff include a full time resident and qualified nurse and a house parent who are available 24/7 to respond to the needs of students. The house parent works under the direction of assistant boarding master and boarding master, both senior teachers, to provide the much needed parental guidance, care, supervision and homely environment to the students.
The boys and girls eat together but go to their separate houses for homework and going to bed. Boarding facilities include spacious cubicles and a multipurpose common room where a number of activities take place e.g.
A fire procedure with routine fire drills takes place on a regular basis as part of the safety procedures for our boarding students. All these ensure that the children are very safe. G4S Guards, School Security and Administration Police all provide security for the School
Boarders are not allowed to have mobile phones and laptops in the school. However, parents are allowed to call the children through the Schools’ mobile phones every day of the week during lunch hour between 1.00 and 1.45 p.m. and after games between 5.30 and 6.30 p.m.
Boarding at Mount Kenya Academy comprises the larger part of the School community. As such it shares the principles, aims and practices of the whole school, but also defines others for itself. It is our aim that the boarders form a co-operative, tolerant and purposeful community in which every member can feel comfortable and accepted, and to which all are encouraged to contribute. The policies and practices which follow are designed to achieve this aim. We recognize that boarding is a very different type of life to that experienced by living at home; that both have attractions and detraction; that both offer differing opportunities but also require concessions.
We recognize that every pupil will respond distinctively to the experience and hope that we as a School will be able to cater individually for each pupil’s needs. We also encourage each pupil to appreciate their corporate responsibility to the welfare of the House as a whole, and that it is in the balance between their rights and responsibilities that all our interests will be best served. However daunting they may at first appear, most of the systems will become very familiar to boarders surprisingly quickly. There will be urgent issues at the beginning such as uniform, timetable, layout of the school and the daily routine, which will be covered in induction sessions in the first few days.
Although boarding is second nature to those of us who have lived and worked with it for years, it can present emotional difficulties for many new pupils and their families, especially in the first few weeks and months.
We hope that you will feel able to talk to us about any homesickness that does occur so that we can share our experience of it and try to help. Awareness that the House is a boarder’s “home” will be important to remember for successful integration and depending friendships. All boarders can keep in contact with their parents through either email by using the school’s computers at the following times: 1.30 p.m. and 6.00 p.m.
The girls’ boarding house has an outdoor recreation area where both organized and free games can be played. G4S guards provide security and there is an established fire procedure with termly routine fire drills.