TABS News

International Statement from TABS

11/23/2016 12:00:00 AM

Having heard from many schools and other stakeholders about international reactions to the political climate in the U.S., TABS shares this statement and encourages our schools and our friends to share freely with their international contacts. We plan to translate in several languages.

In the wake of the recent American elections, some international families and advisors have raised concerns about studying in the United States.  

On behalf of The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) and our roughly 250 member schools in the U.S., we reaffirm that U.S. boarding schools welcome students from every corner of the world. Collectively, TABS schools enroll more than 17,000 international students from more than 150 countries, numbers that have grown consistently throughout the last two decades. Today, more than a third of all residential students in U.S. boarding schools hail from outside of North America.


We celebrate these students. Indeed, many U.S. families choose a boarding school education because they prize a globally diverse community, and wish their children to benefit from the rich opportunities to learn together with peers from other countries and cultures. Low student-to-teacher ratios enable our schools to attend fully to each student’s development—intellectually, socially, physically, and morally—and to model, even insist upon, the core values of respect, honesty, integrity, and compassion. 

A dean at one TABS member school stated, “Everything we do is curriculum.” From dorm to dining hall to playing field to classroom, the immersive learning environment of boarding school enables us to cultivate these core values 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Central to the boarding school experience is the opportunity for students to have a free exchange of ideas in a safe and structured residential community. Our schools are dedicated to providing secure, healthy, tolerant environments for all students, domestic and international. 


TABS schools—independent, self-governed, with minimal government oversight—are and will remain diverse, cosmopolitan, and warmly hospitable communities. Grounded in mission, guided by tradition, TABS schools are firmly committed to an education that acknowledges and honors the value of all peoples. Boarding schools prepare students to participate in—and to help build— a world of growing friendship, cooperation, humanitarianism, peacemaking, and mutually rewarding exchange. Our commitment to this vision is inviolate. 

Indeed, many of our schools are on the vanguard of the global education movement, and TABS, in conjunction with the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), hosts the Global Symposium—the premier annual professional conference devoted to international considerations in elementary and secondary education.

TABS respects and honors each individual school’s unique identity; at the same time, our membership has a tradition of responding in solidarity to crises and to changes in the political, economic, and social landscape. As a “community of communities,” we remain vigilant in our work, steadfast in our principles, and faithful in our commitment to student growth and well-being.  


While academic excellence and extraordinary opportunities may be the historic hallmarks of a boarding school education, boarding school alumni speak most passionately about the friendships that were created during their formative years. These bonds cross cultures and nationalities, and endure the passage of time, the distance of geography, and, yes, the flux of a spirited and sometimes contentious democratic process. 


Today and always, U.S. boarding schools welcome students of every race, religion, language, and nationality.