A primary school in London has become the first school in the UK to cut its school week to just four and a half days due to funding cuts.

Parents of the school have been sent a letter and warned they should ‘actively start investigating childcare options’, as St Mary’s Catholic Primary School in Hounslow prepares to send children home at 12.45pm on Fridays.

In a letter to the parents of the school, chairman of governors Jacqui Corley expressed how some parents had offered to help with the school’s budget deficit, however they would need to pay £400 per child every year for the school to continue to remain open five days a week.

An after-school club is planned for the Friday afternoon, but parents will have to pay to send their children to it and it can only accommodate 150 pupils – half of the number in the school.

Ms Corley said: ‘As a priority we will establish criteria for the allocation of places which are likely to give priority to pupil premium and other disadvantaged children.’

In the letter, the governors explained the extreme measures the school had gone through to avoid this happening, including cutting a music teacher, music classes and a gardener and asking parents to buy classroom essentials such as pencils and pritt sticks.

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