Boarding School

This will, to some extent, depend on the characteristics that one is personally looking for, of course. However, the quality of infrastructure, cultural diversity, and academic excellence, pastoral care, depth of extra-curricular offerings, and the range of opportunities afterward are all things to look for.

Boarding at St. John’s International School is a well-balanced experience with a perfect environment for our diverse cohort of international students to perfect their study habits and focus on achieving top grades.

Equally important are the myriad opportunities to engage in our unrivalled visual and performing arts programme and make the most of access to specialised sport through our extra-curricular offerings. Boarding students are encouraged to fully embrace personal and community responsibility while developing lifelong learning, independence, and leadership skills. Boarders develop their personal integrity, live in a respectful community, and make lasting friendships.

They learn to get along with people from diverse backgrounds with different interests

It can be challenging for parents to decide whether their child is mature enough and emotionally ready to leave home for boarding.  This is an important conversation that we are happy to discuss further with individual students and their families.  To cater for the wide variety of student and family needs we offer full, weekly and flexi-boarding options.

At St. John’s, we accept boarders from the age of 11 when they enter middle school and the Middle Years IB Programme.

There are multiple reasons to choose a boarding school in Belgium. The multilingual and very diverse country lies in the heart of Europe, and other exciting cities like London, Paris, Amsterdam, or Cologne are only a short train ride away.

The town of Waterloo itself, made famous by The Battle of Waterloo (not to mention the Abba song), is a student-friendly town of about 20,000 inhabitants in the French-speaking Belgian province of Brabant-Wallon. It is a pleasant and easy place to live that provides all the conveniences of a large town while maintaining a small-town feel.

Everything one needs in terms of services, stores, medical facilities, and cultural opportunities is available in town. As a result, there are all kinds of free-time activities: from cinema trips and days at the local aquatic centre to visiting the many historical sites and going on bike rides in the countryside. After all, Waterloo is surrounded by the 10,920-acre Sonian Forest, which offers extensive walking, biking, and horse-riding paths.

St. John’s International School is the top boarding school in the country. It is the only international school offering premium accommodation, an extremely varied extra-curricular experience, and an IB continuum education.

If your child holds a passport of an EU or European Economic Area [EEA] nation, it is straight-forward  and does not diverge much from our normal application process.

You can contact us directly here, and one of our admissions officers will be in touch shortly with answers to your questions and any other information you request. You can also book a personalized private tour of our campus and the boarding house just across the street.

Should you not be able to come to Belgium, we can also arrange for a virtual tour beforehand. And finally, you apply for admission, conveniently and paperless, online.

We find those students who settle most quickly into boarding life have a clear understanding of the routine and expectations of the boarding house. It can be helpful to make a list of things needed for the boarding house and to make your child feel at home. In anticipation of the experience, prepare your child to be more independent. Ensure that your child can accompany you when visiting St. John’s. It is not unusual for a child to feel some element of homesickness when they begin boarding.  Our boarding team and friendly experienced boarders will support and engage your child with numerous activities as they settle in and become comfortable in their new home-from-home.

St. John’s offers more than 30 extra-curricular activities in which the majority of the school’s population participates. For this purpose, we boast two multiple sports arenas, outdoor fields, and even a 400-seat professional theatre where we stage large all-school musical drama performances with more than 100 participants.

Additionally, boarders can enjoy the large common area and weekend trips during their stay.

Most boarding schools in Belgium offer weekly and full boarding, whilst at St. John we also offer fully flexible options for modern internationally mobile families that reside in Belgium.  We also cater to foreign students at St. John’s. 

Most Belgian boarding schools will either use French in the Walloon south or Dutch in the Flemish north of the country. There are some multilingual boarding schools, but St. John’s is the only one with a long history of language learning.

French is taught throughout the school in the form of a dual-language programme in the primary years and with advanced and beginner options in middle and high school. Many of our teachers are fluent or native French speakers. This expertise is reflected in a record-breaking 50% of our whole cohort achieving the prestigious Bilingual IB Diploma.

Belgian boarding schools will follow the national curriculum. St. John’s International School is the only boarding school offering the IB continuum programme with over 40 years of experience and a history of academic excellence. Our IB DP results rank consistently and significantly above the world average.

Some will indeed offer football, and so does St. John’s. However, St. John’s is the only one that is also part of the International Schools Sports Tournament, offering competitions with other international schools and trips to exciting locations around Europe.

They generally don’t. But at St. John’s we have an established partnership with one of the top golf academies in Belgium at the renowned Golf de Hullencourt and we are surrounded by some of the country’s most beautiful and established golf clubs.

Some will, but the Visual and Performing Arts Programme at St. John’s is unrivalled with a myriad of opportunities for artistic expression.

Whilst some might offer it, at St. John’s boarders will have the support of a dedicated team of Academic and University Counsellors; we facilitate placement at the best higher education institutions around the globe.

The average teacher-student ratio in secondary education stands at 1:9. At St. John’s, that figure is 1:7.