Durand boarding school closes down at Stedham

Sir Greg Martin, chairman of governors of the Durand Academy Trust (DAT) told the Observer: “Sadly we have decided to close the boarding school because the Education Funding Agency (EFA) wouldn’t give us the money they promised.

“We went on for three and a half years and tried our hardest. A dreadful campaign was waged to get the school closed. They stopped us getting planning permission and starved us of funding. It has been a shocking betrayal of the children.”

Parents were told in a letter from the school governors on Tuesday July 25 that they had been ‘wrestling with a number of difficult decisions, one of which was the boarding school’.

Governors said they had consulted with school staff to try and come up with ways to keep it open and fill a funding shortfall which is believed to be in the order of some £500,000.

“Sadly they, like us could not find the required saving and as such we need to make the painful and very difficult decision to close the boarding school.”

Parents were told: “The fault does not lie with the governors for this painful decision, it lies with the Education Funding Agency.”

The trust has not received the £17.4m for the boarding school promised by the government which was dependent on receiving planning permission. The EFA has now also issued a notice of intention to terminate its funding agreement next June and take over the London academy.

Sir Greg said the DAT had paid for the Stedham site and for a £1m revamp of the existing house in order to start the boarding school. It had been hoped to ‘draw down’ from the £17.4m but the support had been withdrawn. He said the DAT planned to fight a legal battle over the termination of the funding agreement.

There were, he said some 19 members of staff at the Stedham site. He hoped some could be redeployed in London but there were some who lived in the Stedham area who might not want to move.

There would, he said, have to be some redundancies.

The school was home to 70 year 10 and year 11 weekly boarders. The year 11s have now completed exams. Year 10 pupils would complete GCSEs in London, he said.

Campaigners against the boarding school said their fears about its viability had been proved right.

Alasdair Nagle, local resident and member of the St Cuthman’s Campaign Group said: “The local community knew from the start this was an ill-conceived project in entirely the wrong location. Our fears about the viability of the boarding school have proved correct. In addition to the waste of taxpayers’ money, I feel most sorry for the pupils and their parents who have been misled all along by the school’s management.”

Fellow campaigner Adrian Hearle added: “I am very angry at the way Durand try to blame everyone but themselves for the failure of this deeply flawed project. In the letter to parents, they accuse the EFA of not releasing any of the £17.4m funding but fail to mention the reason was because Durand did not deliver on its side of the funding agreement to obtain the necessary planning permissions. The St Cuthmans site was always inappropriate for such a large scale greenfield development and if Durand had only spoken to the planners before purchase they would have realised this.”

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