BOSSES at a private school in Greenock have announced that the establishment will close permanently next month – with 14 jobs set to be cut.
The board of Cedars School, and the board of its parent charity Struthers Memorial Church, confirmed the date of the planned closure as Friday, September 27.
The news comes despite a last-ditch fundraising effort from parents who raised over £50,000 in a bid to stave off closure.
The school is understood to employ 14 staff, with a workforce of eight full-time teaching staff, five part-time teaching staff and a full-time administrator.
A spokesperson for the school board confirmed to the Greenock Telegraph that the staff will now be made redundant and that support will be provided by the school, including the provision of specialist outplacement services.
The chair of the school board, Jennifer Offord, announced: “We are deeply saddened to report that Cedars will close on Friday, September 27, after 25 years offering a caring and Christian education to children in Inverclyde and the surrounding areas.
“Our thoughts and prayers are first for our pupils, parents, staff and volunteers but also our friends and supporters, who have faithfully and sacrificially given to keep the school operating over many years.”
Head teacher Emma Rukin added: “I am immensely proud of what Cedars has achieved and the lasting, positive impact it has had on young lives in our area.
“Our pupils will be seeking placement in alternative schools and we are working closely with local authorities to secure these places and to support pupils through the change.
“We will also work to support our exceptional, dedicated and caring staff who will be seeking alternative employment.”
A spokesperson for the school has provided details of a communication sent to parents on Monday, which outlined the factors which had led to the school’s current position.
These included the new Labour government’s decision to start adding VAT on to private school fees from January next year, as well as recognition of the fact that Struthers would not be able to absorb the cost of a VAT-related fee increase due to it having insufficient reserves.
It also highlighted a continuing drop in the school’s roll, which was down to 76 prior to the VAT announcement, and stated that efforts to market the establishment had not been enough to reverse this decline.
Parents of pupils who attend the school had banded together over the weekend in an effort to bring in enough money to save the school. Martin Shaw, whose stepdaughter attends Cedars, had helped organise the donation drive which secured more than £50,000 worth of funds in the space of just five days.
He said: “It looks like there’s no chance of saving it now but if you look at what we did in five days, we could have doubled that easily if we had, say, three months.
“We could have saved the school financially, so I don’t think this is a financial decision in terms of not being able to run it because we weren’t given the chance to look at the options.
“That’s what people are really bothered about.
“Struthers have been great supporting the school but at the end of the day you can’t just drop it when the time is right.
“You’ve got to involve all of the parents and take cognisance of what their needs are.
“It’s fundamentally wrong to only give people such short notice.
“I think it’s important to make the point that the community could have saved this school but clearly this decision was made several months ago.
“The church have been incredibly generous but that doesn’t make up for not just doing the right thing and giving the parents time.”
They said that when they were became aware of the plan to roll out the change in January 2025, they began consulting with parents about the impact of the change.
They added: “The introduction of VAT is not on its own a reason for closure, but it is an additional pressure.
“The timing of its introduction is really unhelpful.
“It means we’ve had to ask the question now, we set out a process of doing that and we talked to parents very openly on Thursday night last week in the school.
“We asked them to come back over the course of the weekend with a 12noon Monday deadline for responding and they’ve come back and told us what they intend to do.
“That’s left us in a position where we cannot see a viable future for the school." The spokesperson said they were "grateful" to parents for their fundraising efforts, but added that the cash raised was not enough to plug the gap the school was facing.
They added: “We wouldn’t want to be in this for one year and then close because as soon as you announce that pupils walk out the door and teachers walk out the door.
“You can’t run a school like that at our scale, it’s too small.
“We’re subject to a number of potential single points of failure, any of which could trigger closure over the next 12 months.
“In the interests of our pupils and our parents we’ve taken the very difficult decision to close earlier rather than prolong that difficulty and that risk and face a possible very difficult and debilitating closure later in the year.”
An Inverclyde Council spokesperson added: “We have been in close contact with the school’s board of directors and parents to offer support.
“We will continue to liaise with the school and families to accommodate pupils.”
