Parents are preparing to take over a struggling independent school after a backlash against plans to turn it into a free school.
Waverley School, a small prep school in Berkshire, would have scrapped its fees and opened its doors to all local children, doubling its admissions, under proposals by the charity that owns it. But the paying parents staged a revolt and developed their own plan for a takeover, increasing fees, to keep it in the independent sector.
CfBT Education Trust, which took over the school five years ago, has agreed to transfer it to the parents’ council next month. The charity will lease the buildings to the group rent-free for the first five years, write off its deficit and provide a six-figure “soft” loan for working capital.
Fees, which vary by year group but average around £7,500 a year, will rise by about £900 under the parents’ business plan. A handful of families refused to back the plan but the overwhelming majority have done so and pledged to keep their children at the school.
The move is a blow to Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, who has encouraged independent schools to become academies or free schools, the Government’s new model of independent schools funded by the taxpayer on a per-pupil basis.
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Several independent schools have explored the option, including Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire and Wisdom School, a primary and secondary school in Enfield, North London. But Brigidine School, a Roman Catholic girls’ school in Windsor, abandoned plans to apply for state funding from September after protests from parents and doubts over government approval.
Waverley, in Finchampstead, near Wokingham, which has a pre-prep school and nursery, has been running at a loss, which parents blamed on the tough economic climate. It has around 80 children from 50 families, but a capacity for 140.
One of the three parents who led the takeover plan said that financial difficulty was not a good reason to seek free status. “People don’t spent money to send their child to an independent school to then find they are sending their child to a state school,” said Grant Hawkins, an IT software salesman whose daughter Eleanor, 7, attends the school. “We pay for our children’s education because it is about quality.”
Mr Hawkins added: “A number of independent schools in difficulty financially with overcommitments think their way out is to turn it into a free school and the Government is going to pay them to do it.”
When CfBT executives told Waverley’s parent council association that they planned to submit an application to become a free school, Mr Hawkins told them there would be “carnage” among parents opposed to such a move. He and two other parents, Blair Jenkins and Andrew Mitchell, drew up their counter-proposal and signed an outline agreement with CfBT last week, but plan to step back and leave the running of the school to a new governing body once it is appointed.
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Waverley School Parent Council Association said that the school, which was founded in 1945, had been “saved” by returning to its model of parent governance that preceded the takeover by CfBT in 2006.
Neil McIntosh, chief executive of CfBT, said: “We thought we could turn it around but in the market conditions of the last two or three years we have not succeeded. It has lost money in the last three years. My trustees felt they could not sustain it any longer. We are working with the parents’ group extremely well.”
CfBE is seeking to open its first free school in Reading in September.