10-Year Summary 

2015-2016: A Trusting Foundation

Along with others, very naively as I see it now, from back in 2015 I felt I was part of a trustworthy caring open and honest 'school community' uniting children, parents, school directors and other staff. The school had been a fairly ramshackle ‘all-hands-on’ kind of place up to late 2016; a fairly broke affair in the previous two rented locations - part of the Mansion and before that what is now Totnes Bike Hub - and most parents were ok with things that way as long as the learning was reasonable, children were happy and fees were low. 

 

But the rental aspect was clearly difficult for making the school feel like ‘a home’ and for improvements to be made to the space, so we were hugely enthusiastic to support securing a permanent school building for our children after the sometimes insecure experience of the business previously renting a school space.

It was with this mindset that I came along to a meeting with a number of other parents to hear about how we could help in mid-December 2016.

December 2016: Reassuring Words

On Thursday the 8th of December 2016, the two then school directors Ross Robens and Dale Lockett presented to a group of 20 or so parents of the time - generally some of the most supportive, regularly volunteering for events and to donate for new school equipment etc - gathered in a classroom on the 1st floor, with wine passed around, a scheme for parents to loan money to the school business in order to buy the school building Windmill House, which the school had recently moved into on a rental basis.

 

There was a PowerPoint pitch with QnAs, but it was already an easy-sell: we wanted to help our kids and the school community we felt a part of to buy the building and make it ‘our’ new home.

 

A key assurance that they made to us, explicit in the powerpoint slides I have a copy of and which came out in the QnAs and also in later email exchanges, was that if 'in the worst case scenario' money put aside to repay us after the 4-year term did not quite reach the required amount, the business would offer a new round of shares to the current school parents to raise money to cover the shortfall.

 

We were confident the school would succeed as a business in the new building, as it has, especially due to the small class sizes, the then relatively very low fees and the friendly relaxed atmosphere. So, enthusiastic and gullible as we were, without making proper checks by involving solicitors, several families stumped up huge loans, mine included, of between £50,000 and £100,000 in a rush, we were told, to do so before Christmas. We had recently sold our London home and were happy renting so at that time had money in the bank for a scheme like this to help our child’s school.

 

We were relatively comfortable with the simple understanding given to us - which every single one of us parents got from the meeting and walked away with, as later confirmed repeatedly with the parent group - of the school business putting money aside monthly to build up over 4 years to repay us, instead of them paying rent to a landlord. Like most others, I didn’t really understand what a “loan in the form of preference shares” fully meant, but the naive trust we all had in the directors pitching the scheme meant that we went along with it amid the extremely fast push to secure our money within the next week before the Christmas holidays.

 

Plus, there was the 'assurance-guarantee' to approach new parents with a new round of shares in case of any shortfall in the money that the business would build up monthly to repay us.

 

The building was soon confirmed bought, “happy days” for a while.



2020-2022: Bombshell! and Team Efforts to Claw Our money Back

After around 3 years, in an update meeting that we the parent group had pushed for, with Ross Robens, Dale Lockett and their business advisor/associate Andrew Searle, it came out that despite the school business being expected to put money aside monthly from January 2017 to build up to repay us (not needing to pay rent on the building since we parents had helped buy it for the school business), over the last 3 years or so they had put aside a total of £0.00! Abnsolutely nothing. But the business had still been able to afford to pay them good salaries and for some periods family staff.

 

The stink grew further when we learnt they had taken a much bigger mortgage on the building than had been advised; currently in 2026 the total mortgage is understood I believe to be £350K, having started with an unencumbered building bought outright for the business by their students’ parents 10 years ago.

 

They expressed no clear plans of how to pay us back.

 

This was a shock and over the next 2 years or so, flying past the 4-year January 2021 original repayment point, the 2016 parent-group put in a hell of a lot of time, energy and no small amount of money to try to resolve things. We had a multitude of meetings, over 50 I believe from the records (zoom and in-person), exchanged literally hundreds of emails, much drafting of letters together, sharing costs for a solicitor (till the costs and objectives were disagreed about even though progress was being made), researching mediation routes but the school then pulling out of mediation after initially agreeing, ... 

 

We did achieve at least something for all our efforts I suppose: in May and December 2022 we received a 5% and a 10% repayment, which was better than nothing, but far below the 100% repayment with 5% interest in Jan 2021 we had expected. 

No further loan repayments at all have been made since December 2022, despite school fees going up to over £15K, the £350K mortgage, the business appearing to be doing well, and of course the 2016 directors Ross Robens and Dale Lockett, and for some periods family staff, receiving good salaries all this time.

 

At various points we have asked them to invoke the ‘assurance-guarantee’ from their presentation that had been crucial in securing our loans back in December 2016, by approaching current parents with a new round of shares to raise funds. Dale Lockett certainly agreed by email to me that this would most likely go ahead in 2020, then I remember Ross Robens calling it ‘a mistake’ in a meeting and nothing has ever happened with it: this key 'assurance-guarantee' that was vital to get us to hand over large sums of our money has never been honoured.


2023-Present: More Broken Repayment Promises; The Parent Group Splits Up

 

2023 was a year in which nothing much happened. We were all tired of the struggle with the school and hoped that the small repayments made in 2023 might continue.

 

Both 2024 and 2025 saw the school send us a series of emails with hopes of a mortgage in the pipeline to pay us another "portion". It’s important to note that in the original December 2016 pitch for their scheme, we were all led to believe money from profits would be put aside monthly to accrue to repay us and repayment was not dependent on remortgages being approved; nor was it communicated to us in that December 2016 pitch that the two 2016 directors, and for some lengthy periods family member employees too, would keep getting their full salaries despite us not being repaid.

 

Of course among strangers we would not have expected to be treated fairly and would have avoided that 2016 scheme altogether, but this was the leaders of the school community that we felt a part of and it was for the purpose of giving our children a permanent base for their education.

 

In the 2025 part of the saga, urgently needing repayment, I arranged a face to face meeting with Ross Robens. After him initially making a big drama of me refusing to shake his hand - I had long before lost all trust in him and don’t enjoy shaking hands with people I don’t trust - he went on to say he expected we’d get “a portion” back from the mortgage but would not give a proper figure or timing. He also had literally zero to say on us getting a full and final resolution; it seems to me that like today he expected us to be so content to get a long-overdue payment of an unknown amount with the rest coming at some point with no plans as to when or how.

 

Both the mortgage deals mooted in 2024 and 2025 came to nothing. No repayment happened, just long annoying wasteful delays.

 

To add also: in January 2026 a friend pointed out that Companies House online data shows that Ross Robens took a £20,000 loan from the business in his name, still showing as unrepaid when last checked in January 2026. I don’t know the details or reasons.

 

The parent group since some point in 2022 - exhausted from meetings, chasing the school for repayment, divided on whether to pursue them with an expensive lawyer ... - has deteriorated into rare sporadic contact today.

 

Quite a few in the parent group said they couldn’t face the stress of it any longer.

 

Despite encouragement from my part to go public with the painful and sordid saga years ago, the majority view among our group of parents had been mostly very cautious - worried about upsetting someone, or damaging the school business which would make matters worse - so this was respected to keep a unified group position. Also, my family have been through some personal hell outside of this grubby rubbish over recent years, so my perspective hasn’t been very sharp, nor my energy very strong to speak up. 

 

But at this point now, despite the fact the school business needs to repay all of us at the same time equally as I understand, this website comes just from me, Mark El-Kadhi, father of a student at the school from Sep 2015 to Jun 2020, because I urgently need full repayment for my family with the 5% interest. I am completely sick to death of being treated so appallingly by people who I and many others had trusted as ‘honourable’ and by a school which presents itself with the alleged philosophy of ‘LARS – Love Acceptance Respect Safety’. 

 

The recent email from Ross Robens’ PA received this month while I was in the process of preparing this website says once again that it is hoped we will receive a “portion” of our loans: they plan to stretch out the repayment even longer! Despite us coming up to 10 years! Zero indication of full and final settlement with interest.

 

This is completely unacceptable.



Full and Final Settlement

 

I would like full and final settlement for myself and the other parents with the agreed 5% interest by the start of December of this year 2026 - 10 YEARS after naively signing up to a ‘4-year’ loan based on a broken ‘assurance-guarantee’ given by the 2016 directors Ross Robens and Dale Lockett.

 

The full repayment can be achieved I suggest by a combination of:

- the bank loan the school says is now agreed.

- a new round of shares to current parents as presented as an 'assurance-guarantee' in the 2016 pitch of their scheme.

- a cut in salaries by 50% for the two 2016 directors who pitched that scheme; and a sliding-scale cut in salaries among all senior staff until the loan and interest is repaid in full.

- personal contributions from the two 2016 directors who pitched the scheme and who have been paid good salaries for the last 10 years based on the broken ‘assurance-guarantee’ they made to me and other parents.

- open to other suggestions from parents and staff.

 

If the 2016 directors had behaved differently over the last 10 years we would never have needed to arrive at this acrimonious situation. Now it needs an urgent new approach from other senior staff ideally taking the reins completely from past failures, but at the very least managing immediate urgent mediation to achieve a full and final resolution.



REQUEST FOR YOUR SUPPORT: Parents and Staff Past and Present, Ex-Students (over 18), Friends and Associates

 

This painful history has been buried for much too long and the matter will become a bigger more toxic issue affecting more people the longer it continues to be ignored. To help reach a prompt and fair resolution:

- Please share this website widely among school familes and staff past and present, ex-students (over 18), friends and associates of the school.

- Please contact members of the ‘governance group’, even though usually this is a body with some independence from school management and it shows on the school website that email to them is managed by the 2016 director Dale Lockett! Further, both he and the other 2016 director Ross Robens are at the top of the ‘governance group’ photo listings with Ross Robens' P.A. there, too. My thoughts are that it may be hard to be independent from management when you actually are the management. But there are others on the list, too.

- The staff list is here if you know their direct contact details. Among the most senior staff, especially those who’ve been there for several years like Headteacher Simon Bowley, please consider asking them to get involved and take the reins or at least to mediate the process where the current leadership has failed to keep its commitments so badly, in order to find a full and final resolution for the 2016 parent group, in the knowledge that their salaries have been and continue to be dependent on the not small matter of the school having a school building, which the unrepaid parent group of 2016 made possible. https://totnesindependentschool.co.uk/the-team

- Please send messages of support and extra suggestions for how to achieve a just and prompt full and final resolution for the parents who made large loans in 2016 to enable the school building to become the school base to XXXXXEMAILXXXXX. I will share here if not too rude; anonymously if requested.

 

Thank you. Despite the behaviour of some, I still believe in people power. 

https://youtu.be/jop2I5u2F3U


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Apologies for the clunkiness of this website; I haven't got lots of funds to spend on such things. Maybe if I start a scheme.
Everything said here is my honest understanding and opinion. I have no desire to distort or decieve.