Choice of national curriculum or sail training as head hopes to restore tradition

A school best known for its nautical traditions has had to close its sailing centre to help balance its books.

For many years Hull Trinity House School has offered sailing lessons at Welton Waters, west of the city, alongside the national curriculum. But three members of staff at the Welton Seamanship Centre – which costs about 100,000 a year to run – have been laid off as the governors deal with a budget deficit.

The all-boys school, which was set up in 1787, says it is pursuing other options and hopes to find a solution within the year. Chairman of the Governors and an Old Boy Captain Phil Watts said: “It’s a major blow and I’m very, very sad about it, but financial pressures are such that it is whether parents prefer to have sailing or lose an English or Maths teacher. As governors we occasionally have to make these very difficult decisions.”

The school, which has an historic waterfront location on Princes Dock Street in the city centre, may no longer prepare young men for sea, but its old boys come from a generation when many did end up following Merchant or Royal Navy careers. Year 10 and 11 students still wear the naval square rig uniform, white shirt, and a white cloth covered peak cap.

The school still honours the traditions of its forefathers, with pupils expected to turn out to three Sunday Services at Holy Trinity Church each year.

In the past two and a half years the seamanship centre has received funding of 120,000 from the Hull Trinity House Charity, and Capt Watts said they were seeking to change the wording of the scheme so it could be used by other schools.

Capt Watts said they hoped to explore other avenues of funding once the new wording had been cleared by the Charity Commission. He said: “I certainly don’t want it to take another year. It is used an awful lot on Saturdays by boys from the school and volunteers/parents and that has proved very successful and they’ve all really enjoyed it.

“I feel it will lose the impetus if it drags on for a year. I’d like to think we could resolve something in the very near future.

“We have a smallish deficit this year. It was much bigger but we have made other cuts and got it down to manageable levels.

“There will be quite a large deficit next year and becoming increasingly so as the years go by and steps had to be taken to nip the problem in the bud.

“Of course your income is restricted per capita. Being such a small school we’ve had a lot of help from the council and we do appreciate everything they have done, but we couldn’t continue.

“It was a case of do we want to continue the good results or the sailing? Unfortunately we could not do both.”

Headteacher Andy Twaits said it was an “incredible blow”. He said: “Sailing and nautical studies in seamanship has underlined the school in terms of ethos and was one of the reasons it was founded in the first place. But rules and regulations have changed. You have to deliver a statutory curriculum and have a balanced budget. Clearly one of the things that is not part of the statutory requirement is sailing.”

Mr Twaits said the school’s fundamental problem was its size. Under the Building Schools for the Future programme it should double in size to 600 pupils but they have to wait until 2013.

“All I know is that the grants we have managed to achieve have been substantial enough to keep our head above water but we haven’t got those grants now.”

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