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Original poster

Surrey Schools Financial Difficulty

27 replies

GreyUser · 29/02/2024 09:12

We have heard that two Surrey Schools owned by Bridewell Foundation (King Edwards Witley and Barrow Hills) are in financial difficulty and may not be able to cope with increases in costs expected to come from changes to teachers pensions and vat in school fees. The rumours are that they have threatened all staff with dismissal of they do not agree to new contracts by Easter that reduced the schools staffing bill. This is really worrying as we considering the senior school for our son who is in Year Five. I contacted the school but they refused to comment as I'm not a current parent.
Are there any people here with links to the school who can clarify whether the rumours are true and what is going on there at the moment?

OP posts:
Spendonsend · 29/02/2024 09:22

No links to the school at all, but a large number of independent schools are looking at exiting the TPS scheme due to increased costs.

All independent schools are worried about the impact of VAT on parents ability to pay schools fees so i cant imagine many arent in the process of preparing for it.

tennissquare · 29/02/2024 09:18

I don't know anything about these schools but yes it's correct that the teachers pension contribution from schools to TPS is increasing from 23% to 28% on 1st April. If you read other threads on TPS you will see that it is legally acceptable to negotiate this way with teaching staff in TPS as the school may fail financially due to the increase.

This TPS increase only applies to private schools, it's being met by the Govt in the state sector.