What we lose when private schools close
From our UK edition
Just after Christmas, I was standing in our woodshed, filling a barrow with logs, when my wife appeared at the door and told me our school was closing. A local tragedy. Nothing seismic in the scheme of things. It was a very small school, just 150 students – a special place, as all good schools are – except there was something unique about it, too. For 850 years it had educated the choristers who sing in Exeter Cathedral. Now the school was closing, and as my wife read out the letter on her phone, I had the feeling that something magical had been lost. Exeter Cathedral School (ECS) sat next to the cathedral, a partnership going back to the Normans. Together they survived the Black Death, the dissolution of the monasteries, the Civil War and two world wars.
