Abstract:

In the past decades, with the roll-out of “school merging”, China has established an extensive boarding school system. Academia has different views on the relationship between boarding and children’s development, and the influencing mechanisms have yet to be discovered. Based on two waves of China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) data, this paper explores the impact of boarding school on students’ mental health. This paper finds that boarding school has a negative impact. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative impacts are larger for girls, rural students, students with parents living at home, and students from affluent families. To understand how boarding impacts mental health, this paper reports that boarding school affects students’ mental health by reducing parent-child interaction and increasing school bullying. Also, in boarding schools, peers’ negative emotions were also more contagious. Moreover, in schools with longer hours of studying and having more strict management, the negative impact tends to intensify. This study concludes that joint efforts from the school management, parent participation and social involvement are needed, in order to improve the education quality and management of boarding schools.

Key words: boarding school students, mental health, school management