Ashdown House

[Inandoutthedustybluebells]

Difficult times for those at Ashdown House. Commiserations to those facing a new worry on top of everything else.

Read that today- desertion of overseas pupils, apparently.

Indeed ... Thankfully we have no more need of prep schools, and I'd be astonished if 'ours' found itself in serious jeopardy, but the independent school landscape may well look a little different this time next year.

Minster School in York has also announced its closure. Is that 8/9 school now?

8 or 9 schools closing due to Covid I mean.

Oh no! Which other ones??

@Miljea Moreton Hall, Park School, St Mary’s, Minster and Ashdown House that I can remember the name of but there are definitely a few more!

One in Northampton. I can't remember the name but it's really, really tiny.

Little tiny schools were in serious danger of failing even before the pandemic. (I'd got into the habit of warning prospective prep parents who'd been offered scholarships or bursaries by such schools to check the institutions' finances very carefully before committing themselves.) I wonder if any of them will survive this.

But if foreign parents are reluctant to trust their children to a country with such a shameful death toll it's hard to see how even the biggest and most secure boarding preps will continue in the same shape as before.