Parents and staff were left in tears at a meeting this week after bosses of a private school near Bristol announced it would be closing this summer.
Fairfield School in Backwell, a fee-paying independent primary school which teaches children from across Bristol and North Somerset, will close in August 2025. The news was announced to parents in a letter last week and an emotional meeting was held earlier this week to discuss the closure. The parents now face the task of finding alternative provision in the area.
One parent at Fairfield School said parents and children now faced uncertainty. “Many children now face uncertainty around schooling provisions as the majority of alternative local schools are at capacity,” said Kelly Rogers-Smedley. “The VAT tax to parents with children being schooled in the independent sector, increased cost of living wage and income tax, and the slashing of business rates relief has led this incredible school to the point of being unviable.
“I attended the parents meeting earlier this week. There were lots of tears shed from parents, significant praise to the teachers for the fantastic environment they have created and an all round deep sorrow from everyone,” she added.
State-funded primary school education in Backwell itself is already fairly full. Primary education is split in the village with West Leigh Infants school and Backwell CofE Junior school forming part of a federation together on two different sites, and both joined the church-run Lighthouse Schools Partnership multi-academy trust, which is based at Gordano School in Portishead, back in 2018. West Leigh Infants received a ‘Good’ rating from Ofsted in October 2022 and has around 160 pupils on roll in six classrooms.
Backwell Junior School hasn’t been inspected by Ofsted since an ‘Outstanding’ rating in 2014. It has around 240 pupils. With almost all the primary schools in North Somerset no longer run directly by the local council – and almost all academies signed up to multi-academy trusts instead – there is uncertainty about any strategy or investment that can be created by local education chiefs to create additional capacity if the parents of the 130 Fairfield pupils apply to move their children into the state education sector in North Somerset.
Fairfield School’s leaders blamed a combination of factors for the ‘difficult decision’ to close the school this summer, saying a decline in the numbers of children in the area and the ‘prevailing economic environment’ had created a ‘financially unsustainable position’ for the school. When Bristol Live first reported the closure announcement last weekend, the school went into great detail about the various factors which led to the decision.
“It’s with great sadness that the Board of Governors has made the difficult decision to close Fairfield PNEU School in August 2025,” a spokesperson for the school said. “The prevailing economic environment has made it increasingly difficult for both the school to manage its operational costs and parents to be able to afford to educate their children at Fairfield.
“Declining birth rates in our catchment area, cost of living increases, the removal of business rates relief, increases to the national living wage, higher national insurance contributions and the introduction of VAT on school fees have combined to leave the school in a financially unsustainable position,” they added.
Fairfield School was opened in the village of Backwell, near Bristol, back in 1935. It moved to a site on the edge of the village in 1947 and, when its founder retired in 1964, a group of parents took it on and formed a limited company to run the school as a charity. The most recent accounts filed for the school year 2022-2023 show the school was breaking even – just – with around £1.2 million coming in from school fees and around £1.5 million in funds carried forward.
The independent primary school has around 130 pupils and around 35 members of staff, many of whom work part-time, and the school charges up to £3,525 per term – or around £10,500 a year – for a child to attend. The new Labour Government’s imposition of VAT on school fees would have added between £500 and £700 a term to those fees if the school had passed them on directly, or another up to £2,000 a year.
Ryan Davies, the school’s chair of governors, said: “We are deeply sorry to announce our intention to close Fairfield PNEU School at the end of the summer term 2025. We know how difficult this will be for parents, pupils and our loyal staff and apologise to the many people who will be affected by this news.
“Over the coming months we will be unwavering in our commitment to support all our staff, pupils and their families through this difficult period and, ultimately, ensure a smooth transition for all pupils to new schools in September.”
“For nearly 90 years Fairfield has offered a happy, nurturing and vibrant approach to education and I’d like to put on record my thanks to the whole Fairfield community for the difference you have made, and continue to make, to the lives of our pupils,” he added.