House system

The house system is a traditional feature of British schools, and schools in the Commonwealth.

The school is divided into a number of houses and each student is allocated to one house. Houses may compete with one another at sports and maybe in other ways, thus providing a focus for group loyalty. Typically each house will have around 50 students, thus a school with say 750 students might have 15 houses. Facilities, such as pastoral care, may be provided on a house basis to a greater or lesser extent depending on the type of school. Historically, the house system was associated with established public schools, where a 'house' referred to a boarding house at the school. In the case of a day school, however, the word 'house' refers only to a grouping of pupils, rather than to a particular building.

Houses may be named after saints, famous historical alumni or notable regional landmarks. Other more arbitrary names – animal names or colours, for example – are also often used. Houses are also often referred to by the original name of the building or by the name or initials of the teacher in charge of the house (housemistress or housemaster). Each house will usually also be identified by its own symbol, logo, or colour(s).

At co-educational boarding schools, there are usually separate houses for boys and girls. If the school caters for a wide range of ages, older and younger students may also be separated into different houses. At Winchester College and Eton College, there is a separate house for foundation scholars. Where the school has boarders and day pupils, they will often be allocated to separate houses. There have also been cases, for example at Cheltenham College, of pupils being allocated to different houses according to their religion.

Pastoral care

Especially at a boarding school, one of the main purposes of the house system is to provide pastoral care to the students. With parents absent, children are likely to depend on the school to look after their basic physical, social and emotional needs.

Competition between houses

A secondary feature of house systems is the competition between houses. For example, the traditional school sports day is usually an inter-house competition. Debating competitions and charity drives are also often organised along inter-house lines. Merit points for behaviour and academic achievement may also be totalled up for comparison between houses.

Membership and roles

Pupils are usually assigned to houses randomly, perhaps with the aim of balancing the houses in order to increase competition. Sometimes the assignment is based on the social and emotional needs of the student and to ensure proper peer mentoring is enhanced with the right fit of students within a house.^{[citation needed]} Traditionally, however, once a pupil has been assigned to a house, any younger siblings he or she has may automatically become members of that house when they arrive at the school, but this varies from school to school. (This tradition sometimes extends to the children of former pupils.)

One notable feature of the house system is the appointment of house captains, and maybe other house prefects, who exercise limited authority within the house and assist in the organisation of the house. Large schools may have a house captain for each year group (with vice-captains in the largest schools).

In boarding schools the term housemaster is held by the member of staff responsible for pupils living in a particular house (or dormitory). In state schools, members of staff are appointed as (or volunteer to become) head of house. However, both terms can be used at either style of school for the sake of formality.

Other uses

The term "house system" is also used to refer to the residential college systems found in some colleges and universities, such as Caltech, Yale College, Harvard College, and University of Chicago. These systems are based on the college systems of Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the United Kingdom, which in turn share many similarities with the house systems of British secondary schools.

Prominence in school stories

The first barding school story was Sarah Fielding's The Governess: or Little Female Academy, published in 1749. They didn't become popular until 1857, with Tom Hughes' novel Tom Brown's School Days. The house system has since featured prominently at many thousands of school stories books, with many authors writing whole series of books like Chalet School, Mallory Towers, Jennings and Billy Bunter, which have been published around the world and translated to several languages. The Harry Potter books and films (re)popularized this genre, and created unprecedented popularity of British boarding schools (and its associated house system) in countries where they were previously unknown.

These stories depict the popular conception of a British boarding school rather than how these boarding schools work in reality, and focused in the most positive aspects. For example, loyalty to own's house is very important in real life houses, and it's featured prominently in these books. The Harry Potter books have updated the boarding school to modern values, for example by using mixed-sex education houses. Many British people never went to a boarding school, but have integrated their values by reading these books.

The translators of the foreign editions of the Harry Potter books had difficulties translating the "house" concept in countries like Russia, because there was no adequate word that could convey the importance of belonging to a certain house, the loyalty owed to your house, and the pride in the prizes won by your own house. This forces translators to insert extra explanations in the dialogues, making foreign readers think that the house and boarding systems were a special feature of the fantasy setting, when they are really a real world feature doesn't need to be explained to any typical British child. The French translation doesn't explain the differences between the French and English real-world boarding schools, including that French houses are not responsible for their own discipline via head girls/boys.

See also

• Harvard House system
• House System at the California Institute of Technology
• Hogwarts houses, fictional houses in Harry Potter books
• Ball culture, a North American sub-culture also known as the House System