Why The School Closed

I believe that the school closed mainly due to finical reasons. From the mid-80's onward there was a dramatic drop in the number of pupils that were enrolled at Quantock.

The Peasters tried to counter this drop in pupil numbers in a various ways. First, in about 1986 they admitted girls to the school. Second, in about 1990 they tried to expand to take A-Level Students, but this failed to take off. Third, in 90's the school started to recruited students from Hong Kong and the far East. Finally the school also started to take day pupils. However with the exception of admitting girls to the school none of these solutions delt with the underlying problems.

The reason I believe the school suffered from a decline in pupils:

1. The biggest problem faced by the School was the that the Forces stopped helping with boarding school fees. When I was at Quantock 85-90, I was one of only 2 pupils out of the 30 people in my year that was not a Forces child.
2. I also think over the same time period, there was a big decrease in the 'fashionability' of sending kids to boarding schools generally. A lot of other smaller boarding schools closed around this time. When these other smaller boarding schools closed down, Quantock would get 30-40 new kids all from that school (e.g. Chilten?).
3. The next big problem was that the school got a pretty bad Offstead report.
   
4. This bad Offstead Report resulted in the School being removed from the Forces Recommended Schools List, which for Quantock was pretty fatal.
5. This bad Offstead Report also resulted in the school being removed from the Hong Kong Recommended Schools List of as well.

David Peaster at this point in the late 90's was also very ill with bowel cancer and later died in 1998. Compounding all this, the school also got embroiled is allegations of child abuse (Find out more here) dating as far back to the 60's. These allegations along with David Peaster ill heath, I believed, resulted in the final decision to close the School.

These are the most salient factors in the closing of the Quantock School, certainly as I see it,

Mike Blake ([email protected])

 

---

 

This subject has been covered on various message boards - if you wish to read all the points of views expressed, then see Links below:

Links:

The demise of Quantock

The Death Knell

School - Newz & Gossip!