Students quickly adapt to a home away from home

An increasing number of students are now attending boarding schools.

More than 5,000 students applied for Guangzhou Tianhe Foreign Languages School from across the province in 2012 and more than 8,000 applied for it last year, said a staff member with the recruitment office who refused to be named.

The father of a third-year junior high school girl surnamed Wang said he and his wife chose the Affiliated Tianhe School of Guangdong Experimental Middle School because their daughter would have otherwise been assigned to a poorly run junior high school. She boards during the week and returns home during the weekends.