The school dates back 1,400 years but will close this year due ‘unsustainable pressure’

One of England’s oldest schools is due to close at the end of the academic year. Thetford Grammar School in Norfolk dates back 1,400 years and traces its origins back to the court of King Sigbert of the East Angles in the 7th century.

Parents at the day and boarding school were told about the closure in a letter from Chair Jay Liu on Monday, April 27. He announced that with a “heavy heart” and “clear focus on securing the very best future of our pupils” that the independent school would close.

He said that the school has faced “significant and increasing challenges” in recent years. He shared that he believes Labour’s VAT charge on private school fees is a reason.

Mr Liu said: “Since January 2025, the imposition of VAT on school fees, alongside the removal of Business Rates relief, increased employer pension contributions, rises in the minimum wage, and continued increases in utility and operating costs, have collectively placed unsustainable pressure on many independent schools, including Thetford Grammar School.”

Mr Liu added that after “careful review” the school’s board decided that the financial strain is no longer viable for Thetford Grammar to continue operating independently.

He continued: “This has been an extremely difficult decision. Throughout this process, our overriding priority has been the continued education, wellbeing and future opportunities of our pupils.”

Head of Thetford Grammar School, Amanda Faye, shared her “heartfelt thanks” to all parents, alumni, members of the Thetford Community, and other independent schools who have reached out over the “last horrendous 48 hours”.

Mrs Faye added: “It is now my duty to ensure that each of my 180 students finds a place that suits their needs to continue their education, and that my 67 staff find employment. It is a duty I intend to do with care and compassion as my tenure over one of the oldest schools in the country comes to an end.”

Since the announcement, neighbouring schools have shared their thoughts and reached out to those who will be affected. A spokesperson for King’s Ely wrote: “We are extremely saddened by news that another UK independent school steeped in history – this time just across the border in Norfolk – will close its doors at the end of the Summer term.” King’s Ely has said that limited places are available for September.

MP Terry Jermy for South West Norfolk has recognised the news will be “unsettling” for staff and parents, but “most of all the students”.

Reacting to the announcement, he added: “Thetford Grammar School has been struggling financially for many years and losing significant sums of money. Income dropped sharply with falling pupil numbers in 2013 and never recovered. With around 200 pupils and a capacity of more than 300, not filling the spaces became fatal.”

MP Jermy continued: “Given these clear challenges, the educational charity that had existed for many years sold the school to private ownership in 2017. Had the school not been bought out by the Chinese investment company, it would have likely closed then. Following the sale, it has been operating as a private business, and accounts published on Companies House document the continuing financial losses long before the 2024 General Election.

“It may be politically convenient to blame Labour’s VAT policy on private schools for the closure, but the reality is the school would have likely closed regardless.”

The MP said he was “disappointed” the school did not reach out to him about their challenges and whether or not additional support or alternative arrangements could have been put in place remains to be seen.

King Charles’s speech to the US Congress – only the second such address by a British monarch – demonstrates how much both the US and the UK have changed in the last three decades.

The first speech was in May 1991 during his mother, Queen Elizabeth II’s, third state visit to the US. The underlying purpose of both speeches was the same: to stress the enduring links between Britain and the US. But the circumstances in which they were delivered were very different.

The late queen’s speech came in the wake of joint action by US and British forces, along with other allies, to eject Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops from Kuwait. She referenced this in her speech as a concrete example of the strength of the Anglo-American alliance.

In 2026, the UK has pointedly refused to join the US-Israeli attack on Iran, angering President Donald Trump. Charles’s speech adroitly inverted the moral of this apparent diplomatic rift, suggesting that tensions in the past had always been overcome. Referring to the revolution of 1776 he noted: “Ours is a partnership born out of dispute, but no less strong for it”, because ultimately “our nations are in fact instinctively like-minded”.

A speech like this, voiced by the monarch, can serve at least two useful purposes. The first is to portray things that are, at heart, profoundly political, as being somehow above politics. The second is to place the transitory difficulties of day-to-day diplomacy within the much longer-term perspective of a dynasty that traces its lineage back to the Norman Conquest.

These two elements featured in how both Elizabeth II and Charles’s speeches depicted the Anglo-American alliance. The latter was the basis of a joke by the king, who referred to the actions of the Founding Fathers “250 years ago, or, as we say in the United Kingdom, just the other day”.

Charles’s speech was beautifully crafted and delivered with a degree of warmth and conviction that was always beyond the range of his mother’s public oratory. That, in itself, was almost an implicit reproach to the president’s own rambling, undisciplined public pronouncements.

And in more than one way the address was pitched over the head of Trump. The lack of any immediate pushback from the president suggests that the subtlety of some of the messaging eluded him. But in a more significant sense, it was an appeal to causes that still resonate with much of the American political class if not with the Trump administration itself.

Charles stressed the value of Nato and the importance of “the defence of Ukraine and her most courageous people”. He made a sly reference to his proud association with the Royal Navy – an institution that has been the subject of some disparagement by Trump in recent weeks.

He emphasised the importance of protecting the environment, although couched in a Trumpian language of profit and loss: “We ignore at our peril the fact that these natural systems – in other words, Nature’s own economy – provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security.”

Perhaps his most pointed remarks – and those that generated the loudest applause from some (although not all) in the hall – were directed at the US itself. He described Congress as “this citadel of democracy created to represent the voice of all American people”. He mentioned the role of Magna Carta in laying the foundation for the constitutional principle that “executive power is subject to checks and balances”. Trump’s opponents clearly enjoyed that.

Saving the special relationship

State visits by British monarchs to the US have been relatively rare, and state visits to London by US presidents are even rarer. Trump is unique in having made two. This in itself is a mark of the desperate attempts by British governments, both Tory and Labour, to find ways of managing relations with his administration. This desperation was also apparent in Keir Starmer’s reckless decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to Washington.

The king’s speech pushed in interesting ways at the boundaries of what a British monarch might be expected to have said in Trump’s America. Yet some of the sentiments in his mother’s 1991 address to Congress – considered uncontroversial at the time – could no longer be expressed without the risk of offending the current administration.

Queen Elizabeth noted: “Some people believe that power grows from the barrel of a gun. So it can, but history shows us that it never grows well nor for very long. Force, in the end, is sterile.”

That may be a lesson Trump will have to learn the hard way. But for the moment, he and his immediate circle seem to have an unwavering belief in the primacy of kinetic force, and have little interest in the objective Charles described of stemming “the beating of ploughshares into swords”.

The queen also commended “the rich ethnic diversity of both our societies”. Charles spoke instead about interfaith understanding. This is not quite the same thing – but is certainly more compatible with the Trump administration’s disturbingly relaxed approach to the rise of white-supremacist politics.

Perhaps the saddest feature of a comparison of the two speeches is the queen’s proud boast in 1991 that “Britain is at the heart of a growing movement towards greater cohesion within Europe, and within the European Community in particular”. If the US has changed since 1991, so has Britain. It would be nice to think that one day the monarch might give an equally generous speech about shared history and values in front of the UK’s European neighbours.

Thompson, 78, played the character of Charlie Fairhead from the show’s beginning in 1986 up until 2024, making him the longest-serving cast member.

Charlie retired from Holby City ED after surviving a near-death experience when he was stabbed by a patient trying to steal medical supplies from the hospital.

The Sun reports that Thompson will be returning for a brief appearance and has begun filming scenes.

A source told the publication: “Fans will be delighted to see Charlie.

“The character was never killed off and the door was left open for a return.

“Viewers will have to wait to see how Charlie’s storyline pans out.

“But it is an appearance rather than a permanent return to the cast.”

Charlie’s comeback could coincide with Casualty’s upcoming 40th anniversary, which is due to take place in September.

Newsquest have contacted the BBC, who have declined to comment.

Derek Thompson’s time on Casualty

Thompson was involved in some huge storylines on Casualty over the years, including a will-they-won’t-they relationship with Duffy (Cathy Shipton) that spanned over 30 years.

Towards the end of his time on the show, the character also supported Duffy through her heartbreaking battle with vascular dementia ahead of her death.

Other dramatic episodes saw Charlie shot in the chest, held hostage by an armed man, and even run over by an ambulance on his wedding day.

When it was announced that Charlie would be leaving Casualty, Thompson took the time to pay tribute to Pete Salt, the real nurse who inspired his character.

Recommended reading:

He said: “The time has come for me to hang up Charlie’s scrubs after the most wonderful 37 years.

“Charlie Fairhead was inspired by a real nurse – Pete Salt.

“Together with the writers and producers, I have tried to bring to Charlie the compassion, kindness, heroism and sound judgement that we all see and love in Pete and I want to say thanks to Pete and everyone else over that time who has inspired me in bringing this character to life.”

Would you be happy to see Derek Thompson return to Casualty? Let us know in the comments.

The treatment allows children and young people to have significantly less intensive chemotherapy

Advertisement

A gentler treatment for children whose leukaemia has come back could boost survival and quality of life, a Great Ormond Street study has found. The new regime slashes the need for intensive chemotherapy and eliminates deaths linked to treatment in children with relapsed leukaemia.

Led by doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh), the study found children and young people with relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) can be treated safely with significantly less intensive chemotherapy. The UKALL Rel2020 study, published in the journal Leukemia, involved youngsters having less intensive chemotherapy before moving on to blinatumomab, a targeted immunotherapy that tells the immune system to attack leukaemia cells.

Some 188 children and young people aged one to 24 were included in the study, taken from 25 UK paediatric cancer centres between 2020 and 2024. The new approach achieved remission rates of 92% while long-term survival (82% after three years) was comparable to children on more intensive traditional treatment plans.

No patients died during the early phase of treatment, which experts said represents a big leap forward in care. ALL is the most common childhood cancer, with around 400 new cases each year in the UK.

Although cure rates for newly diagnosed disease are high, the cancer coming back remains an issue. Dr David O’Connor, consultant in paediatric haematology at Gosh, said of the study: “This approach marks a major step forward in developing kinder treatments for children with relapsed cancer.

“The early phase of treatment has traditionally carried significant risks. By using lower-intensity chemotherapy and moving rapidly to blinatumomab, we were able to eliminate treatment-related deaths without compromising effectiveness.”

Romyn Winters was two when her parents noticed that she was unable to walk properly. Her parents, Lisa and John, from Dunbar in East Lothian in Scotland, said in a statement: “We were on holiday in Yorkshire when we noticed Romyn’s leg was starting to look weak and she was crawling instead of walking, and then she started to get more unwell and stopped eating.”

In October 2018, tests confirmed Romyn had ALL and she was taken to NHS Lothian for treatment. Her parents said: “Romyn had chemotherapy which had harsh side effects that made her sick. Unfortunately, within 18 months following treatment, she had relapsed.

“We were offered a bone marrow transplant or to try blinatumomab with a lower dose of chemotherapy. By this time Romyn was seven and we weighed up the options and what her future might look like. Blinatumomab sounded scary as it was unknown, but we thought it would give us more options if she didn’t respond to the treatment, and hopefully she’d recover more quickly as it sounded less severe than the stronger chemotherapy.

“Dr Baird and her team supported us really well and kept us informed every step of the way. After a few expected side effects to begin with in hospital, Romyn was coping well and was able to have blinatumomab at home via her pump in a backpack. Within days, she was back playing on the trampoline with her brothers which was great to see.

“Romyn is now off treatment and recovering well thanks to the blinatumomab being easier for her to tolerate. Since having her chemo port removed, she’s been able to take part in new childhood hobbies like her friends.

“We went on holiday to Tenerife and she learnt to swim in a week – we now can’t keep her away from a swimming pool.”

According to Gosh, the clinical trial differs from others because it was delivered as routine NHS care, making the results more representative of real-world patients.

‘Britain prides itself on tolerance – right now that promise is being tested and it must not be allowed to fail’

Atrocities must stop

Two Jewish men stabbed close to a ­synagogue in broad daylight.

Ambulances firebombed. A community left fearing for their safety. What happened in Golders Green is no longer isolated outrage. It is part of a disturbing pattern of attacks on Jewish people that has no place in Britain.

Counter-terror police are investigating, and a suspect is in custody. But arrests alone will not restore confidence or safety. Keir Starmer is right to call it an anti-Semitic attack. Now his government must act with urgency.

Jewish people are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for something basic – the right to live, worship and walk their streets without fear. Britain prides itself on tolerance. Right now, that promise is being tested, and it must not be allowed to fail.

Shut it, Don

There is a reason private conversations between world leaders stay private. Discretion and respect are not optional – they are the bedrock of diplomacy.

True to form, Donald Trump trampled all over them. At a White House dinner, he ­casually claimed King Charles backed his hardline stance on Iran, suggesting the King agreed with him more than he agrees with himself.

It was as absurd as it was inappropriate. No such endorsement was ever given. But this is what Trump does. When his position is shaky, he drags others in to bolster it. The King should not be used as a political prop. And Britain should not be spoken for without consent.

Total champs

Mason Mount funded a once-in-a-lifetime experience for seriously ill kids with his Wishes United FC, hammering Jamie Redknapp’s celebrity mascots team 32-2.

His young team have endured things no child should ever have to. For two days, none of that mattered.bNever mind the World Cup, the match of the year has already been played.

Aries 0904 470 1141 (65p per minute)*

Taurus 0904 470 1142 (65p per minute)*

Gemini 0904 470 1143 (65p per minute)*

Cancer 0904 470 1144 (65p per minute)*

Leo 0904 470 1145 (65p per minute)*

Virgo 0904 470 1146 (65p per minute)*

Libra 0904 470 1147 (65p per minute)*

Scorpio 0904 470 1148 (65p per minute)*

Sagittarius 0904 470 1149 (65p per minute)*

Capricorn 0904 470 1150 (65p per minute)*

Aquarius 0904 470 1151 (65p per minute)*

Pisces 0904 470 1152 (65p per minute)*

*Astro line horoscopes are updated every Thursday. Calls cost 65p per minute plus your telephone company’s network access charge and will last approximately five minutes. You must be over 18 and have the bill payer’s permission. Service provided by Spoke. Customer service: 0333 202 3390

Planning on getting out and about with your four-legged friend? Well, you’ve been warned.

Several instances could put pets at risk during long walks, garden gatherings and days out near lakes or rivers.

As warmer weather encourages more time outdoors, Darren Beale, CEO of Years, the fresh dog food brand, says the long weekend can create a “perfect storm” for dogs.

“Bank holidays usually mean longer walks, busier parks, BBQs, garden time and trips to lakes or beaches,” says Darren.

“That is great for dogs, but it also increases the chance of them eating, drinking or stepping on something they shouldn’t.”

Bank holiday risks dog owners should watch for:

Lakes, ponds and stagnant water

Dogs should not be allowed to drink from stagnant water, ponds, canals or lakes, especially in warmer weather.

Some water can contain bacteria, parasites or blue-green algae, which can be dangerous.

“Always take fresh water with you on walks,” says Darren.

“If your dog is thirsty, they are much more likely to drink from puddles, lakes or standing water before you can stop them.”

Long walks in warmer weather

Owners planning longer bank holiday walks should avoid the hottest part of the day and watch for signs of overheating.

“Dogs do not always know when to stop,” Darren explains.

“Heavy panting, slowing down, drooling or seeming disoriented can all be warning signs.

“Shorter, shaded walks are often safer than pushing for a big route in warm weather.”

BBQ scraps and picnic food

Cooked bones, skewers, onions, corn on the cob, fatty scraps and dropped food can all cause problems for dogs.

“Bank holiday food is one of the easiest risks to overlook,” says Darren.

“Dogs will scavenge if they get the chance, so BBQ areas, picnic blankets and bins need to be kept out of reach.”

Grass seeds and sharp debris

After walks through long grass, fields, or parks, owners should check paws, ears, and coats for grass seeds, thorns, or sharp debris.

“Grass seeds can lodge in paws, ears or skin and sometimes need veterinary treatment,” Darren says.

“A quick check after a walk can prevent a small irritation from becoming a bigger issue.”

Garden chemicals and compost

Compost, mulch, fertilisers and slug pellets can all be dangerous if eaten, particularly during spring when gardens are being refreshed.

“Dogs are drawn to strong smells, so compost and garden products can be tempting,” says Darren.

“Anything used in the garden should be stored securely and kept well away from pets.”

Darren’s bank holiday safety checklist for dog owners

• Take fresh water on every walk
• Avoid letting dogs drink from lakes, ponds or stagnant water
• Walk earlier or later in the day if it is warm
• Keep BBQ food, skewers and bins out of reach
• Check paws, ears and coats after walks
• Store compost, fertilisers and slug pellets securely
• Keep dogs supervised around unfamiliar gardens, lakes and picnic spots

“Most bank holiday risks are avoidable,” Darren adds.

“The key is planning ahead and seeing the day from your dog’s perspective.

“What smells interesting, what looks edible, and what might they run towards before you have time to react?”

What are you doing this weekend? Let us know in the comments

What is it?

So, er… why?