The tide has turned for state boarding schools, says Melvyn Roffe, headmaster of Old Swinford Hospital, who in September 2007 becomes principal of Britain’s largest state boarding school, Wymondham College, Norfolk

At the end of my first term as head of Old Swinford Hospital, I attended a Christmas drinks party at the offices of one of our business partners. As the evening wore on I fell into conversation with a lady who, after some minutes detailing the precise role she had in one of the larger firms of Birmingham solicitors, asked me what I did for a living.

I told her that I was the head of a state boarding school. She looked surprised and after a moment’s hesitation said “Well, I hope you make them wear helmets and knee pads.” Before I could compute the meaning of what she had said she had gravitated away towards a table of canapés. On the way home, however, I resolved never again to be mistaken as the head of a skateboarding school.

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