Laura Holden, 38, is a videographer living in Thanet, Kent. Her three-year-old son attended the private school St Lawrence College for preschool this year and was due to start reception in September. However, the sudden closure of the school over the Easter holidays dramatically upended their plans, as well as the lives of 500 other pupils and over 200 employees.
This makes St Lawrence College part of a trend of private schools closing after the introduction of a 20 per cent VAT charge on school fees. New figures released this week found that the number of children at private schools has fallen by 30,000 since the introduction of VAT. Here, Laura describes how the sudden closure has impacted her son, her family and the wider community in Thanet.
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The school first announced a merger that was effectively a closure in late February this year. It was to be with Dover College which is almost an hour away to a much smaller site with far fewer facilities. St Lawrence’s has around 500 pupils while Dover College teaches under 300 – they didn’t have the space or staff, they literally couldn’t fit the children in.
This was announced completely out of the blue. Just the week before, we had our moving up meeting at school welcoming all the new joiners in reception, as well as the large bulk of the preschoolers, where we met teachers and so on.
