Issue 3: A Briefing on the Business of Education and Creative Thinking
Part Two: What Next For Independent Education? Plus AI in Education Meet Up, September Climate Record, and Papers for ICEduTech 2026
ANALYSIS / Part Two: Independent Education
In the last newsletter I highlighted a project I have been working on to track market activity in UK independent education. My motivation has been to understand the sector I work in and to think about what it could look like. It followed a LinkedIn post by Dean White, the Chief Operating Officer at Rugby School.
Across the sector there are various sources of information but it is still disparate. The introduction of VAT on fees charged by independent schools to parents has had a huge impact on the sector. Combine this with cost pressures, demographic changes, and the macro-economic situation, and it is a challenging situation for the sector. The question I asked in the last newsletter was what next for independent education?
Following messages and suggestions which came from the post, I thought it would be interesting to look further into the data and share it with you. As a caveat, I am not expecting this data to be watertight but to help illustrate and track what has happened.
Highlights
So what has happened in the UK independent education market? Here is an updated recap of the highlights so far for 2025:
A total of 70 strategic deal activity counts. This includes mergers, acquisitions and investments, not closures.
37 independent school closures in 2025. I have yet to cross-check this data with the Department for Education database.
UK Independent education market activity 2025. Class Futures.
Breakdown
Breaking this data down for UK independent preparatory (prep) schools the picture is as follows:
28 mergers and / or acquisitions. The details of deals are not always published so I have grouped these activities together.
20 closures (likely to be higher).
Independent prep schools have been the hardest hit, and this is such a shame. The character and soul they provided for a preparatory education has been lost forever. This doesn’t even account for the wider benefit that these organisations provided. There’s no going back at least in the short term.
The character and soul they provided for a preparatory education has been lost forever.
For UK independent senior schools, the activity breakdown is as follows. Note some organisations numbered here provide all-through education which includes preparatory education.
17 closures
14 acquisitions
Summary
In summary, the highest concentration of market activity has been UK preparatory schools. The independent schools which provide preparatory education up to 13 years of age have suffered a lot of turbulence with 48 market events in total. This activity will continue into 2026.
This is in contrast to market events for UK senior independent schools where the sum is 33. In this space, continued activity is expected with talk of more activity between senior independent schools themselves.
With such change, is this the end of independent preparatory schools in the UK? Of course not. But it’s a tough question and one the sector must be challenged on. There is a lot to be done to ensure preparatory schools survive. Having worked across all types of education provision and in business, I hope to share more ideas here. However, the successful prep school will retain its character and adapt in clever ways for its staff, parents and pupils.
Sources and credits: ISM, School Management Plus and ISC.
I also publish previews of the Class Futures Briefings using LinkedIn newsletters. If you’ve subscribed there too, thank you. Your support is genuinely appreciated. The newsletter series looks at how education, technology, and business are changing, and how creative thinking helps us make sense of it.
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THE PLANNER
✏️ Pencil it in: events for the term
CONFERENCE/ Educational Technologies 2026
ICEduTech isn’t your typical edtech event. It’s an academic conference where researchers and educators explore how education is changing. If you’ve got ideas or research to share, you can submit a paper by 10 November 2025. All submissions are peer reviewed, meaning they’re checked by experts before being accepted.
🔗 icedutech-conf.org/call-for-papers
EVENT / AI in Education NW Hub Meet Up
Are you based in or near the North West of England?
Join members of the AI in Education practitioner panel at the University of Manchester on Wednesday, 13 November 2025, from 17:00 to 18:30 GMT, for the first regional meet up.
Hosted by Chris Hillidge and James Radburn, with contributions from Benjamin Barker, Ben Davies, and others. As well as networking, the session will showcase how AI is being applied in schools across the region.
🔗 Register here
EVENT / BRILLIANT Festival
BRILLIANT Festival opens on November 11, 2025 from 8.30am until 5pm in Liverpool and it is free to attend. Details were published in issue 2.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate
September 2025 was the third warmest September on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 16.11°C, according to ERA5, a climate dataset produced by the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Copernicus monitors our planet and its environment to support decision making across Europe.
The month was:
0.66°C warmer than the 1991–2020 September average
0.27°C cooler than the record September of 2023
1.47°C warmer than the estimated pre-industrial average (1850–1900)
The graph below shows global average surface air temperature anomalies relative to the 1850–1900 pre-industrial reference period, plotting monthly running averages from 1979 to 2025. The trend indicates a +1°C increase over this period. Temperature anomalies help track shifts in climate over time and assess the pace of global warming.
You can read the piece in the FT here and receive the climate bulletins Copernicus here.
“Making the process better, easier, and cheaper is an important aspiration, something we continually work on - but it is not the goal. Making something great is the goal.”
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