CROYDON IN CRISIS: After losses of £55m in just six years, the financial problems at the Whitgift Foundation could see bursaries axed for its world-famous boys’ choir.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Trinity School, the £25,000 per year fee-paying boys’ school in Shirley Park, could be set to go fully co-educational, perhaps as soon as September 2025, in the latest development to impact the large independent schools run by the Whitgift Foundation.
But that dramatic change to the 142-year-old Croydon institution may not be enough to save one of the school’s most accomplished organisations, the world-famous Trinity Boys’ Choir, with the financially struggling Foundation understood to be considering axing choral bursaries.
Future changes: Trinity School in Shirley Park has had a co-educational sixth form since 2012
As Inside Croydon reported last week, the Whitgift Foundation lost another £11.4million from its unrestricted funds in the year to August 2023 – just a month before it announced the imminent closure of Old Palace girls’ school, one of its three large schools in the borough.
The 2023 losses follow a previous £19.9million loss in the registered charity’s finances in 2022 – meaning that since 2017, the Foundation’s unrestricted funds have fallen from £252million to £197million in 2023 – a drop of 22% in six years.
The Whitgift Foundation is the Croydon property business which operates three (soon to be two) fee-paying schools, the almshouses and care homes, but which is haemorrhaging tens of millions of pounds a year because of the continuing delays over its £1billion property gamble to redevelop the town centre shopping area.
Inside Croydon approached the Foundation with a series of questions about its finances and future, including offering the charity the opportunity to deny the persistent suggestion that Trinity’s 1,000-pupil school will soon look to open its ornate gates to girls from the age of 11.
The Whitgift Foundation did not deny the possibility of Trinity going co-ed, but in a statement said that the school is “both thriving and full, with Trustees continuing to consider options for supporting girls’ education once Old Palace closes in 2025”.
That “supporting girls’ education” could be very significant, given the charity’s founding principles call for the education of children, without specifying any gender, and the loud accusations of sexism that have been made against Foundation, prompting formal complaints to the Charity Commission and Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Whitgift Foundation was founded in 1596 by John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury to Queen Elizabeth I.
Of its two boys’ schools – the other being Whitgift in South Croydon – Trinity, with its more modern school buildings, is seen as being more readily adaptable to accommodate girls as well as boys. The sixth form at Trinity has been co-educational since 2012.
Merchant banker: Christopher Houlding, chair of the Whitgift Foundation governors
The closure of Old Palace girls’ school was announced in September 2025. The pre-school and prep school at Melville Avenue closed this month, with that site being put up for sale by the Foundation for £7.5million. The senior girls’ school, based in listed buildings in Croydon Old Town, will close in July 2025.
The chair of the Whitgift Foundation’s Court of Governors declared that there was “no viable alternative” to closing Old Palace as “the school has been struggling financially for many years”.
Trinity’s former pupils include Gavin Barwell, the Tory MP who did so much to send the Foundation’s finances into a nose-dive when he championed teaming up with Westfield to regenerate Croydon town centre, including the Foundation’s most important money-spinner, the Whitgift Centre. The £1.4billion scheme was due to be completed by 2017; today, 12 years after Barwell announced the project alongside Boris Johnson, the Foundation is still left waiting for the first brick to be laid…
On song: the Trinity Boys’ Choir recruits around 16 of the country’s best singers every year
Other notable former Trinity pupils include Colin Sell, the pianist on BBC Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue (so much like Barwell, then…); Ian Marchant, a former CEO of SSE plc and chair of Thames Water; noted military historian Correlli Barnett; Daniel Zeichner, the Labour MP for Cambridge; Ian Watmore, the former chief exec of the FA; Imani-Lara Lansiquot, the Olympic bronze medal-winning sprinter; and Mark Butcher, former Surrey and England batsman, now a Sky Sports commentator.
But it has been the Trinity Boys’ Choir which, over nearly 60 years, has earned a worldwide reputation for excellence, performing at Glyndebourne, La Scala and the Royal Opera House, in the BBC Proms and appearing on the soundtracks of several Hollywood blockbusters.
And noted modern composer, John Rutter, composed an opera for the boys’ choir, Bang.
They’ve even sung on Michael Buble’s Christmas TV special.
The choir was formed in 1965, and since 2001 the musical director has been David Swinson, who broadened the choir’s international profile, including tours of Europe, the United States and Japan, and appearances at the Royal Variety Performance and on Strictly Come Dancing.
Retiring: David Swinson was director of music at Trinity from 2001
Swinson took retirement earlier this month, at the end of the school year.
That significant departure, and the Foundation’s parlous financial position, may create a perfect storm for the boys’ choir, which annually attracts applications from 700 boys wanting to become part of the school’s next generation of young trebles.
Regional auditions are carried out, in the north, east, west and south of England. The result are 70 applicants who are called to a final audition in Croydon, of whom about 16 get places – at a significant cost in burseries and scholarships to the Foundation.
One source close to the school told Inside Croydon, “The Whitgift Foundation is probably not going to be able to afford choral bursaries for the next generation of young trebles joining Trinity Boys’ Choir, perhaps as soon as the 2024-2025 academic year, or 2025-2026 at the latest.”
Without the burseries, the choir may well continue, but would no longer be able to offer subsidised, private school education to the most talented singers. Only those with parents with very deep pockets could afford to attend the school and join the choir – another dire consequence of Barwell and Johnson and the multi-billion Westfield development blight they inflicted on Croydon.
Read more: Houlding decides not to hang on at the failing Foundation
Read more: Old Palace closure brought on by shaky Foundation finances
Read more: Falling rolls and rising fees: how Old Palace got squeezed
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Ahh the silver lining around the cloud, the removal of single sex education. Ever since I first learned of single sex schools as a child I thought the notion was odd. Children should grow up getting used to the fact that they will have to learn to deal with other people from a different sex to them not be separated from them. Hurrah if Trinity does become fully coeducational, let’s hope Whitgift follow suit.
Eton is a single sex school, and when you consider the rubbish that place has churned out of late, it’s high time it stopped being a charity and started paying taxes like any other profitable business
This a typical classist comment. Clearly you have a problem with top hats
It’s a little known fact that girls tend to excel in science if they are taught separately, so razing all single sex schools to the ground might not be all that wonderful
Just an observation, Arfur: Are you really saying that Eton should remain a single sex school and pay no taxes if it no longer churns “rubbish”? Looks like it!
Great idea. Now define “rubbish”.
No Arno, don’t be so silly. As for Etonian rubbish, examples include Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, David Cameron, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Zac Goldsmith, Kwasi Kwarteng, Douglas Murray…
I have been watching the performance of the Trinity boys choir at Glyndebourne in recent years and it is pretty woeful – if the 3 boys singing at the Magic Flute this year are the best they can produce then frankly it is time the choir is wound up and the money invested in something else. The same goes for the full choir singing in the Faerie Queen last year- can’t sing in tune and cannot project – time to scrap them.
Gosh – what a horrible comment. Do you have a personal grievance?
As an Old Palace former parent it is possible.
Well given they didn’t sing in the “Faerie Queen” last year, you must have seen a different choir!