INDEPENDENT schools may be forced to pay into a fund to ensure that pupils continue to be educated and looked after if schools go bust.

The scheme, modelled on those used by airlines and travel agents, would place a duty on schools to ensure that pupils were educated to the same standard for no extra cost.

The move comes after Newlands School in Seaford, East Sussex, was closed without warning over the Easter holidays. Hundreds of pupils were left scrambling for places at nearby schools in the middle of the academic year.

Every year up to 60 private schools open and close. The failures are due to lack of students, bankruptcy, heads retiring or the proprietors wishing to sell.

Newlands expects to reopen today after announcing last week that its premises had been “re-obtained”. More than 250 parents and children turned up at the school at the weekend to hear that it had been saved by two fathers of pupils there. Sixth-form students will start today and another 90 pupils are expected to start in September.

The school closed after suffering financial difficulties; the landlords, the Chittenden family, refused to allow it to continue under new management. The head, Oliver Price, said: “There was overwhelming joy and delight that the school has been saved. It was a hugely positive meeting and we are getting more pupils registering for the new term every day.”

But the 236 girls attending Holy Cross Convent School in Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, were not so lucky. Founded 78 years ago by an order of nuns based in Switzerland, it will close in August. Although the school had millions of pounds in assets, the trustees declared that the alma mater of the television presenter Zoe Ball was unviable. They also rejected an offer by parents to buy out the school for £5 million.

Nick Cray, whose 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte, attended Holy Cross, is writing to Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, asking her to force private schools to give a year’s notice where there is “no financial imperative”.

“What’s scandalous is that the school’s closed with children in the middle of their GCSE and A-level courses,” he said. “They are distraught. A lot of them can’t get on to similar courses anywhere else and will have to go back a year.”

Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, is calling for a law to require independent schools to contribute to a fund “to facilitate the uninterrupted education of pupils in independent schools facing closure”. Mr Baker, who expects his Bill to gain cross-party support, said: “The safeguards one would expect of a public service . . . should apply in the private sector too. It’s not like a chip shop going bust overnight, and it shouldn’t be treated that way.” The sector would pay a levy into a trust, he said, managed by a body such as the Independent Schools Council.

Jonathan Shepherd, the council’s general secretary, said arrangements should be reviewed. “I’m in favour of the informal mechanisms being made formal, but it would be wrong for it to be made law for schools to help out other bodies. I don’t know what the fund would do, because generally parents are given a lot of notice,” he added.

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