Venture capitalists go back to school

13 january 2013

 

A group of enterprising teachers has secured the help of an angel investor to launch Britain’s first venture- capital-backed independent school, writes Oliver Shah.

Radnor House will open its doors to pupils next September after Albion Ventures agreed to support the management team with £8.7m of seed funding. David Paton, who will be deputy headmaster, sold his house to plough an extra £100,000 into the project.

Bob Cook, head of Victoria College in Jersey, has been poached to become headmaster.

The school will be housed in a grade II listed building on the banks of the Thames in Twickenham, southwest London, on the site of the 18th-century poet and satirist Alexander Pope’s Palladian-style villa. It will accommodate up to 320 boys and girls and charge about £4,000 a term.