Parents were shocked to discover that their children’s school has suddenly announced it will close.

According to an article published in The Herald Scotland, one of the last Scottish private schools for girls is to shut.

It’s often the case that the smaller private schools suffer from a steady decline in pupil numbers.

This in turn has the effect of those schools being forced to increase the fees charged to their dwindling pupil role, until it becomes financially imprudent to continue.

The circumstances around this school’s unfortunate demise, however, also include worries around the proposed taxation changes to the charitable status of private schools.

Rumblings in the Scottish private independent schooling system suggests this won’t be the only school to close due to this taxation issue.

This would have the effect of requiring schools to pass on their increased financial liability in the form of raised fees to parents and this appears to have been the final straw, following as it has steadily a reducing student roll.

In recent years the pupil roll has fallen. In 2008/09 there were nearly 500 pupils at the school, but this fell to 359 in 2012/13 and 269 in 2016/17 and 223 this year.

In just one decade single sex education in Scotland has shrunk considerably. Falling from 13 such schools ten years ago there are now only eight private girls’ or boys’ secondary schools left and one in the state sector throughout the whole of Scotland.

Here’s a link to the article in The Herald Scotland, by by Andrew Denholm, Education Correspondent, who first reported on the school’s impending closure.

Photograph copyright The Herald Scotland