By Gavin Mackintosh And Chris Williamson-
A £10,000 a year private school has been closed down due to failing standards and dwindling numbers. St Christopher’s Independent Day School in New Dover Road, received a damning ofsted rating that discredited their high paying fees for an education level that was failing a number of its students.
An estimated half a dozen staff have also been made made redundant after a number of parents decided they were not getting their full value for money in the expensive private school.
St Stephen’s Academy, run by St.Christopher school, has now formed a new company with other supporters to try to keep the school going. Founded in 1923,and run by St Christopher’s School (Canterbury) Ltd and owned by headmaster David Evans and his wife Alison, the school is in emergency gear. It should be one of the best primary schools in the Uk, with fees that high, but high school fees only guarantee a high standard of education if the teaching is really good, and the teachers know how to get the pupils to develop academically and mentally in the right manner.
Children of rich parents are sometimes so spoilt that they spend more time at home on facebook and with expensive play stations. Many young children from well to do homes have expensive laptops, are driven in top of the range cars, wear expensive clothes, and feel so on top of the world that after a while they feel too big and important to actually respond to the high academic standards being taught in schools. Many financially well off parents don’t know where to draw the line when it comes to providing quality material amenities for children they have also put in private education, peer pressure in such schools can be destructive to children who need to focus on what is being taught.
There is also the additional problem of very well paid teachers being complacent in some of these schools, that they lose sight of their overall task of raising standards. The school was criticised by ofsted inspectors for ”failing to follow best practice in terms of obtaining references before interview and appointment.”Academic and personal development of pupils at the school was also below expected levels, and ”senior leaders failed to follow statutory safeguarding guidance or their own policies to ensure that pupils are safe and protected.”
The standard of teaching at the school is agreed to be high, and the behaviour of pupils at the school is generally good. However, parents complained about the tone of newsletters addressing the behaviour of some of the pupils and the response of the school to perceived criticisms by parents about the school. One teacher from the school who insisted on anonymity told The Eye Of Media.Com:
” St Christopher School has always been a school of dedicated teachers, but there has been some undesirable level of polarization between some teachers, parents, and the top leadership of the school. Quite frankly a lot of the problem was coming from difficult parents who spoil some of their children, and who fail to respect the authority of the school. Most pupils behaved well, but many were being wrongly influenced by some disruptive and arrogant pupils”.
St Christopher school was attended by 85 pupils between the age of 5 and 11. Research conducted by The Eye Of Media.Com on the school in 2017 showed the school prepared its pupils well for the 11 plus exams, but a number of them were lagging behind compared with pupils of similar age in some of the good state schools in the U.K that were none fee paying.
“It is a sad situation to see such a long-established school close and we just want to try and see if there is anything we can do for those parents and children to keep it going, using our experience and resources,” he said.
“There could also be opportunities for children from the new school to benefit from St Stephen’s facilities.”
But Mr Pywell admits that as a fee-paying school it will rely on securing sufficient pupil numbers to make it viable.
“The school had financial difficulties and we cannot inherit those,” he said. “We will need at least 30 pupils and ideally 50. “