Bellerbys College was a series of two (formerly four) private international co-educational boarding schools based in the UK, owned by Study Group. It offered students subject pathway courses. Its colleges closed in September 2022.
Programmes
The college offered A-Level courses over six terms (2 years), five terms (1½ years) or three terms (1 year).
The college also offered a foundation programme in which students choose from one of numerous subject streams.
The Bellerbys College foundation programme was taught and examined to the same standards as A Levels, where applicable, and enabled students to prepare for entry into a specific field of study at university while also improving their English and study skills.
As of 2020 Bellerbys had a level 4 programme leading to direct entry to year 2 of an undergraduate programme at an NCUK university.
In 2021, Bellerby's announced a new partnership with Loughborough University that helps students receive conditional offers for specific degrees. The college had similar agreements with University of Bath and the University of Bristol.
Location
Prior to full closure, the colleges were located in Brighton, Greenwich, and formerly Oxford and Cambridge.
History
Founded
Bellerbys College dated back to Davies's College, founded in London in 1927. Davies's College was originally set up to prepare students for entrance to Oxford and Cambridge, the Armed Services and the Civil Service. A second branch of Davies's College was founded in Hove in 1959. Davies's Tutorial College in Hove as it was then called was based in premises at 44 Cromwell Road in Hove. The college was a tutorial college providing A-levels and A-Level re-sits mainly for British students.
In 1980 Mr Robin Bellerby became principal of Davies College in Hove and the college expanded to occupy neighbouring premises on Cromwell Road. At this time the college expanded its recruitment overseas and the college made links with the Jordanian government, leading to over 30 students from Jordan coming each year to study A Levels on government scholarships. Other students at the college came from Malaysia and Hong Kong.
Later the college was renamed Bellerbys College after the principal became the new owner. In 1991 the college was bought by a group of British businessmen who invested money in recruitment overseas and developed the foundation programme, a one-year bridging course enabling international students to enter UK universities at first-year undergraduate level.
The original Davies's College in London, which was located at 25 Old Gloucester Street, Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London, continued to operate independently of the college in Brighton until its closure in 1998.
Ownership
In 1994 the business together with the Embassy schools became British Study Group, later Study Group International, later to become owned by the Daily Mail Group before being sold on to the Australian Champ group.
On July 1, 2010, Providence Equity Partners took ownership of Study Group and in February 2019, Ardian, a private investment house, announced that it had acquired a majority stake in Study Group.
Growth
In 1996 Bellerbys opened a campus in the north of Cambridge and the following year took over a school in Wadhurst, East Sussex, expanding to cater to growing demand for British education overseas. Then in 1998 a London centre opened on the campus of the Roehampton Institute, University of Surrey (later Roehampton University). The college was based in Downshire House, a grade II Listed building in Roehampton, for four years until moving to custom-built premises, Bounty House, in Greenwich. Bellerbys Cambridge added its Queens Campus in 1999 and an Oxford campus opened on Broad Street in 2002.
Rape
In January 2011, an 18-year-old Malaysian Bellerbys girl student was gang raped at the school's Bounty House halls of residence following a disco at its nearby Greenwich campus. The four perpetrators, three of whom were the sons of Russian oligarchs, were all fellow students at the college; they were sentenced to a total of thirty-five years in prison.
Teacher "struck off" In 2015, a biology teacher at Bellerbys' Cambridge site was banned from teaching for an indefinite period after kissing a student on the lips in a "sexually motivated" manner.
Closure
Bellerbys College closed their Cambridge campus on 31 August 2020. In September 2022, Bellerbys College closed in its entirety.