Although most parents can’t wait to get their children properly back to school this month, let no one imagine that school life will be normal. Establishments everywhere have had to re-examine how they teach, re-work budgets and building plans and redesign sports and co-curricular timetables.
Demand for private education appears to be holding up—with enquiries from parents unimpressed with the home-schooling support from State schools, plus Hong Kong families interested in the UK’s citizenship offer—but the coming economic crash will undoubtedly hit hard. ‘People are not committing, leaving things as late as possible, and are sometimes happy to forgo their deposits if they find their personal situation is not good,’ observes Neil Roskilly of the Independent Schools Association.
Having already given between 15% and 30% off last term’s fees and frozen fees and staff salaries for the coming year, independent schools are also trying to support families through cashflow problems. One bursar in the south of England confides that he has some £1 million of fees outstanding, being managed through payment plans. ‘We’ve seen a huge spike in requests for assistance,’ he reveals. ‘It will be interesting to see if people will catch up at the end of the payment holiday.’
‘There will be lots of postponed building projects,’ adds Anna Maria Clarke, bursar of King’s College School, Wimbledon. She points out that Covid-19 has long tentacles: schools must fund increased cleaning and transport but will lose income from hiring out facilities for events and so on. ‘There are lots of hidden consequences.’
Denne historien er fra September 02, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 02, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
