Yorston Lodge Prep School in Cheshire has announced it will close for the last time in July, local newspapers have reported.
The school in Knutsford said it will close on July 14, 120 years after it first opened, the Knutsford and Wilmslow Guardian reports.
The school owners Montague Place have not yet commented on the closure but government data shows the school had 71 pupils and capacity for 156. Fees were £9,696 a year in the prep school.
The announcement comes just weeks after Riddlesworth Hall School in Norfolk, which was attended by Diana, Princess of Wales, closed for good in April due to financial challenges.
In 2015, Riddlesworth Hall joined the Confucius International Education Group – which runs international schools in China – but it said it had “been facing unprecedented financial challenges for several years” and was “no longer viable”.
The news follows close behind a number of high-profile closures, including Fosse Bank School in Tonbridge, Kent.
Janet Dallimore, headmistress at Yorston Lodge, said the whole school community was “deeply saddened” that it would close at the end of the summer term. She has worked at the school for 28 years.
Montague Place Limited was asked for a comment by local reporters but declined to issue a statement.
Montague Place’s website says in believes in “communities not conglomerates, effectiveness not efficiency, value not volume”.
It adds: “By bringing together a small group of ‘like-hearted’ schools into a supportive community much of the administrative burden is removed, empowering heads and teachers to better direct their time and, critically, their energy to the education and development of their students.”
School Management Plus has also contacted Montague Place for comment.
