BGI Akademiet

“If your dreams don’t scare you, dream bigger.” So goes the slogan on the website of BGI Akademiet, a boarding school in Hornsyld near Horsens and Vejle in Denmark. To many of the school’s new pupils, aged 15 or 16, moving away from home is scary enough. “When we welcome them here, they have just left their families. They have lived and gone to school in the same place. This is the first time they have to forge new relationships on their own and take care of practical things themselves, and all this can be a massive challenge,” says Helle Vestergaard, the school’s principal.