£2.5m parent backing saves school

A protest was held during the Easter break over the closure

Two parents have stepped in with £2.5m to help an independent school in East Sussex get back up and running after it went into administration and shut down.

Pupils were left without school places and staff faced redundancy when Newlands School, in Seaford, suddenly announced its closure on 3 April.

Now with new backers, the school has bought Newlands Court and a boarding house back from the administrators.

A meeting was held on Saturday with the school due to reopen on Monday.

There will also be a registration process for parents who want their children to join the "newly-formed school".

Headteacher Oliver Price said Newlands has "a clean sheet"

The closure, because of financial problems, initially left more than 400 children without a school place to go back to after the Easter holidays.

Headteacher Oliver Price said the new backers were "hugely professional people who will be running the school very properly".

"They have shown by their commitment, financially, that they take this seriously.

"They both have children who will be going to the school and they wouldn't be putting this sort of investment in, and I wouldn't be sticking around, if I didn't believe this was really feasible and was going to work."

The school had to arrange for children's coursework to be put onto computer disks when it shut down.

Schools and colleges around the South East offered emergency places and some pupils have already started elsewhere.