What is a riding school?

You can't really get to grips with the world of riding without going through a riding school at some point. The riding school is an essential part of the equestrian world today, for a number of reasons you'll discover in this article. So what exactly is a riding school?

What is a riding school?

A riding school's main job is to teach riding to groups and to individuals. Riding schools are therefore generally large establishments with a certain number of facilities. These typically include an indoor school, an outdoor arena and the stables.

The indoor school is a large space, usually under cover, where lessons are held. The arena is a similar space, but outdoors. As for the stables, this is where the horses live when they aren't out in the field or in a lesson. The stables include stalls, a tack room, paddocks and so on.

You'll often notice that a riding school also has one or more grooming areas, either outside or under cover. These are used by riders when they clean up or tack up their horses.

Riding schools sometimes also have an emergency first-aid store, as well as one or more storage areas for straw, farm machinery or forage. Riding schools are in principle built to the standards required for premises open to the public.

Before a riding school can start trading, it must register with the town hall, the Ministère de la Jeunesse et des Sports and the Haras Nationaux.

Those running a riding school generally hold qualifications allowing them to supervise equestrian activities. Depending on what the public wants, a riding school may keep a larger or smaller string of horses.

Generally speaking, the ponies and horses found in these centres belong to people who lend them or entrust them to the riding school. These owners usually buy their tack from La Sellerie Française.

How riding schools work

Since a riding school's main activity is teaching, riding instructors are generally busy at weekends and on Wednesdays giving lessons to individual clients.

Riding schools devote the other days of the week to school groups or to various leisure activities. The rest of the time, the riding school concentrates mainly on administrative work and on maintaining the premises.

That means organising any events, mucking out stalls, keeping up with the ponies' and horses' health care, looking after the horses, and communication work.

Now that you know how a riding school works, don't hesitate to drop in on one near you to find out more about the world of riding.