St Bees School Charitable Trust: December 2020.

As recent OSB President I have frequently been asked questions concerning the running of the school and the current role of the Charitable Trust.

This is a summary of the events at school, leading to the current position, as seen through the eyes of a Trustee. This summary should answer many of those questions.

Four Old St Beghians, including myself, are Trustees of the St Bees School Charitable Trust.

The Trust has two primary functions, firstly to provide an educational opportunity for children through the utilisation of the school estate and its educational heritage and secondly, to manage the financial affairs of the Charitable Trust. The principal assets of the Trust are the land and buildings.

The school reopened in September 2018, three years after closure.
St Bees School Charitable Trust and Full Circle Education, a Chinese education group, established a joint venture company to achieve this.
The Trust took a 25% share in the company, providing the school estate to the company free of cost. Full Circle took the majority 75% share.

The reopening of the school was beset with difficulties, with the costs of reopening significantly higher than the original budget had forecasted.

The condition of the buildings had suffered during the closure, and to meet legislation and safety standards, significant money had to be spent upgrading the services and facilities. It became apparent during this process that the maintenance of the school buildings had been badly neglected over an extended period.

The Trust was unable to fund fully its share of the rising reopening cost from its reserves and attempts to raise capital from the sale of non-essential assets proved difficult. Full Circle consequently loaned £577k to the Trust to fund its share of these costs up to January 2018. Reopening costs were forecast to continue to rise again in 2019 and Full Circle declined to fund the Trust further within the joint venture agreement. The Trust had made no progress at that stage raising capital from the sale of assets and had no alternative but to surrender its 25% share in the joint venture to Full Circle to allow the project to continue. The School Trustees therefore relinquished governorship of the school at this stage.

Since January 2019 Full Circle Education Group has financed and managed St Bees School, their Senior Leadership Team assuming total educational responsibility. The maintenance of those school buildings and facilities required to accommodate the developing school has also been their full responsibility.

Currently the Trust continues to have an outstanding, interest-accruing debt to Full Circle, a matter the Trust is working hard to address. Full Circle has generously deferred the repayment date of their loan.

An operating agreement exists between the Trust and Full Circle to ensure that the school is managed in line with Trust expectations and St Bees School’s traditions. A formalised reporting process is in place through which the Trust assesses the performance of Full Circle as the school operator.
The Trust maintains the right to terminate its agreement with Full Circle at any time, if the agreed performance criteria are not met.

An Intellectual Property agreement also exists between the Trust and Full Circle permitting Full Circle to use the St Bees School name to market its ‘St Bees Schools in China’. In due course the Trust will receive royalty payments from Full Circle for this Intellectual Property. Full Circle opened two new schools in China in 2020 with a capacity in excess of 2000 pupils. They have recently signed letters of intent to open a third school in 2021. 

The school in St Bees currently has 50 pupils, almost equally split between day pupils and boarders. September 2020 saw numbers nearly double from the previous year. Pupil numbers need to reach around 150 for the school to be financially viable. This figure however assumes that the level of bursary support can be successfully managed. Attracting new pupils is difficult. To date there has been limited interest from local families, and school numbers have been enhanced by bursary-sponsored, foreign students. At the present time there are no exchange students from the Full Circle Chinese Schools at St Bees. 

The school provides a happy and secure environment with both teachers and students achieving highly satisfactory results. Roger Sinnett, the Headmaster, is proving to be the perfect catalyst for the reopening project and success to date under his stewardship has been most encouraging.

Since January 2019 a principal focus of the Charitable Trust has been the profitable management of the St Bees School estate to generate revenue to repay the Full Circle loan and maintain those buildings not required by the school. This is a challenging task ranging from the commercial activity of running the Management Centre as a conference and meeting centre, collecting and negotiating rents and royalties and disposing of assets. Currently negotiations are ongoing for the sale of Grindal House and Abbott’s Court.

A further major issue is the negotiation of Trust mineral royalties. In the event that West Cumberland Mining is successful in its application to reopen the Whitehaven colliery, the Trust holds the mineral rights on the land involved in this project.

Going forward, the reopening project is dependent upon rising pupil numbers and the financial commitment of Full Circle. St Bees is the ‘corner stone’ of the Full Circle educational vision and the Trustees remain confident that the project will ultimately succeed, however it will take time and further substantial financial input.

Peter G. Lever (G 61-66),
Trustee.

 

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St Bees School,    St Bees,    Cumbria,    CA27 0DS.

         Tel: (01946) 828093      Email: osb@stbeesschool.co.uk      Web: www.st-beghian-society.co.uk