West Heath School is an independent school in Sevenoaks, Kent. It caters for children for whom mainstream schooling has become insufficient, for varying reasons. The school's motto is "Rebuilding Lives Through Education."
The school, founded in its current form as a charitable trust on 14 September 1998 as the Beth Marie Centre, is based in 31 acres (13 ha) of parkland on lease from Mohamed Al-Fayed, who contributed almost £3 million towards the school. The building formerly housed West Heath Girls' School, a girls' school with around 100 boarding pupils, established in 1865 and closed in 1997.
The school occupies premises formerly occupied by West Heath Girls' School, a private school founded in London in 1865, and which moved to this site, the 18th-century Ashgrove House, in 1932. The former mansion house is grade II listed.[2] Pupils included (from 1974 to 1977) Diana Spencer, the future Princess of Wales. In the 1990s the school began to experience financial difficulties owing to falling pupil numbers, and it was placed into receivership in 1997.
The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund considered buying the school, but decided against it, and Mohamed Al Fayed stepped in to buy West Heath for £2,300,000 on 20 May 1998 as new premises for the Beth Marie Centre. He later pledged to contribute a further £550,000 towards equipping the school. In a statement, he said:
I am surprised that the Princess Diana Memorial Fund, with all its millions in the bank, did not show a greater interest in this project. I believe it to be a far more fitting tribute to her work than putting her name on tasteless souvenirs.[1]
The school was founded in its current form, as The New School at West Heath, with Valerie May as Principal, on 14 September 1998. At the start it had around 30 pupils. Boarding began in the year 2000, and there are six boarding houses, each named after one of the trustees (see "Management", below); Tarrant, Sissons, Astor, Ruth, Hunniford and Esther.
An additional, more modern, teaching block was built to increase the classroom capacity and overall space for the school.
The entertainer and singer Madonna, who visited the school in 2010, has funded the educational progression through it of one pupil (who has been kept anonymous).
The school was renamed as West Heath School in September 2015.[3]
Paedophile scandals
Vice-Principal and Head of Child Protection (at the time) William Whillock was outed as a sex offender in 2010 via the accidentally left phone of his victim. The female victim was roughly 16–17 (Whillock at the time was 57) at the time and has never been publicly named. Whillock encouraged the victim to send flirty texts before pushing for photos, the resulting photos – a total of 14 – were graded at level one on a scale of one to five, with level five being the most serious, one of the photos was a vaginal crotch shot without underwear. Whillock was suspended within hours of the discovery and later sacked, he was made to sign the Sex Offenders Register and will never be allowed to work with children again.[4]
Many of the disadvantaged pupils have not had the opportunity to get a formal Statement of Special Needs (SSEN) for various reasons.
Costs – £15,790 p/a (per annum) for day pupils, £42,972 p/a for residential (boarding) pupils.
Class size – 10 maximum.
Funding – The school does not have state school status; however it is indirectly funded through the Local Education Authorities (LEAs) of individual pupils, Social Services, Health authorities, bursary or self-funded. Each pupil has an annual review each year to determine if their needs are being met and what changes if any need to be made in their education. Recently[when?] the school had to cut back hard on funding due to a decrease in charity donations. Al-Fayed ceased funding the school.
It received some money from Children in Need in 2004, and teachers and pupils also partook in fund-raising activities for Children in Need as a whole, for example sponsored silences, head shaves, makeup-for-the-day and so on.
Entry – Entering the school requires a Local Education Authority procedure or Social Services referral, as the school has the status as a Special School.
As well as teaching pupils from Years 7 to 11, the school operates a section allowing pupils to get "support" from the school while going to college; the school itself does not have staff to teach subjects at A-level. Many continue boarding at the school while going to college elsewhere.
Fund a Child's Education (FaCE)
The New School has set up a fundraising drive, FaCE (Fund a Child's Education) to enable it to help children in need of the school to move from its very large waiting list of potential pupils.
^Ofsted (2017). West Heath School: School and residential report. p. 11. Retrieved 7 July 2020. Trustees agreed to change the school's name from The New School at West Heath to its present name from September 2015.
