The Last Belmont Magazine 1994
Transcript:
BELMONT ABBEY yesterday became the second Catholic independent school in a
week to announce closure. The victim, apparently, of the recession and a declining
demand for boarding.
However, some Catholics laid the blame on the "outdated" image of Catholic
schools and others pointed to the growing willingness of Catholic parents to send
their children to Anglican establishments.
Father Leo Chamberlain, head of Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, the premier Cath-
olic boarding school, said:
"If all Catholic parents used Catholic schools, there would be no problem."
Like Buckfast Abbey prep school in Devon, which announced its closure last
week, Belmont Abbey, near Hereford, which has 142 boys ged 11 to 18, is owned and
run by Benedictine monks.
Breaking the news to his 24 staff, the head. Father Christopher Jenkins, said:
"Boarding education has stopped being the norm for parents who could afford it. I
am afraid other boarding schools will have to face the sadness of closure."
The Rt Rev Mark Jabale, abbot of Belmont Abbey, said: "Economies and care-
ful budgeting have enabled us to get through the last few years, but the monastery is
unable to continue to sustain the growing losses, which are approaching six figures
this year." Belmont Abbey, founded in 1859, originally trained boys for the monastic
life. In 1926 it was converted to a lay school educating boys for the secular world
within the religious ethos of a Benedictine monastic community.
Mr John Hubert, the bursar, said boarding numbers had fallen relentlessly from
their peak of 260 in 1976 to 82 this year.
The school had done all it could to adapt to changing circumstances. Girl boarders
had been admitted in the 1970s and day girls in the 1980s. However, the demand was so
small that the practice had been discontinued.
It had scoured the Far East and Europe and had accepted pupils with dyslexia. Non-
Catholics now made up half the roll.
"None of it has stemmed the tide," Mr Hubert said. "Hereford is an under-popu-
lated county, so there was a limit to how many day pupils we could attract."
Fees are £8,000 for boarders and £4,500 for day boys. Last year a respectable 79
per cent of the GCSEs taken at Belmont were graded A to C. At A-level, however, only
27 per cent of the entries were graded A or B, putting the school near the bottom of
the table.
The boys most affected by the closure are the 22 who are half-way through their
A-levels and the 26 half-way through GCSE.
At Ampleforth, which hopes to recruit some of the boys, Father Leo said: "We
believe a Catholic family does best for its children when it uses Catholic
schools. However, there is a willingness among some parents now, which didn't exist
before, to use Anglican schools."
"The main reasons are distance frpm home and thetrend away from boarding.It's perfectly
possible to be a good Catholic and think that boarding is terrible."
"On the other hand, a growing number of Anglicans are finding a clarity of
faith in Catholic school that they don't find elsewhere."
Father Christopher Jamison, head of Worth, West Sussex, another Bene-
dictine boarding school hoping to recruit Belmont boys, rejected the suggestion that
a growing number of parents regarded Catholic education as outdated. He said: "Five
simple words hold the key to what we do: work, play, love, morality, religion. And in a
monastic school all five have first-equal importance.
"It's true, though, that religious allegiances are less fixed than they were, we
have 25 Anglicans at present."