Scientology school loses crucial ability to host foreign students after inspection

[Greenfields School and its head teacher, Andrew Hodgson]

In June, Greenfields School — Scientology’s premier boarding school in England —had to explain to parents that a government agency had found deficiencies in its ability to safeguard its students.

Now, it has suffered a much worse blow. According to a letter sent out to parents by the school that we’ve obtained a copy of, another government inspection has resulted in Greenfields losing its ability to host foreign students, which has made up about 30 percent of its student body.

“I regret to inform you that our ability to sponsor students has been withdrawn by UK Visas and Immigration. This means that we will no longer be able to sponsor students from overseas,” Head Teacher Andrew Hodgson wrote in the letter, which recommended other nearby boarding schools where foreign students would have to look for accommodation.

“Greenfields is the only Scientology school in the UK, meaning it should be a shining example of the benefits of L. Ron Hubbard’s ‘study technology’,” says Alex Barnes-Ross, a former London Scientology staffer who has been reporting on problems at Greenfields at his website. “Instead, regulators have flagged multiple serious safeguarding issues and the Home Office have now stripped them of their ability to grant educational visas for foreign students. Although Greenfields doesn’t explicitly teach Scientology, it certainly applies Ethics Tech on its students – one of the most ruthless and harmful practices in Scientology – and I’m glad the authorities are stepping in to protect children from abuse.”

Greenfields, like so many other tentacles of the Church of Scientology, tells the press and public that it is independent and not part of the church. But its board of trustees is made up entirely of Scientologists, and the board is chaired by Peter Hodkin, Scientology’s most prominent UK lawyer. Hodkin is known, for example, for fighting to make Scientology weddings officially sanctioned in England. The first couple married after that change in the law in 2014 was Hodkin’s daughter, Louisa, to Alessandro Calcioli, who is former Scientologist Neil Gaiman’s nephew. Calcioli is also a Greenfields trustee.

What makes this decision by UK Visas and Immigration particularly bad timing for the school is that it just raised tuition rates by 30 percent for the 2024-25 school year, and Alex tell us his sources at the school say that parents are very unhappy about it.

The school was founded in 1981 by Peter Hodkin’s mother, Margaret, who passed away in 2019. According to the school’s website, she was “familiar with the benefits of Study Technology, [and] wanted to establish a school that utilized this remarkable technology and encouraged a love of the arts and creativity in general.”

Just this week, Scientologists were solicited with messages on social media encouraging them to consider the school because of its relationship with the church. We took these paragraphs from that message:

Does your child attend a school where the environment is sane and theta? Where Ethics is as important as Academic achievement? Where there are no mental health nurses on standby to “help” students with psych fueled interventions?

Greenfields Independent Day and Boarding School for 2-18 year olds is an excellent school with genuinely caring teachers, smaller class sizes in a calm and nurturing environment. It is excellent and affordable as we want as many children as possible to be able to attend and received a Greenfields Education.

What is best of all is that it is the only Applied Scholastics school this side of the planet.

Applying study tech on a daily basis and teaching the students to apply it themselves and learning about the Way to Happiness. What better combination is there?

We celebrate having a multicultural environment alongside promoting British Values in a secular environment.

Just over 40 years ago, LRH himself requested that Margaret Hodkin, a former captain of Saint Hill, start up Greenfields Independent Day and Boarding School so there could be a special place for Scientology kids to go and get an education and where the tech would be applied. 40 years later the school is still attended by her great-grandchildren and the legacy continues.

Many of our children are local but we also have many students who are attending on short term courses whilst their parents come and get trained or go OT at Saint Hill (only a 10 minute drive away from the school).

In those 40 years, however, the school has not escaped scrutiny and scandal. Even at its own website, a photo of one of its early classes has a curious missing figure that has been removed from the picture…

The missing figure, it turns out, is a teacher who was jailed for sexually assaulting teenage boys at the school.

What’s less easy to erase, however, is the school’s close association with Scientology.

“My question is, how is it even possible the kids at the school are protected from Scientology? With Greenfields’ current structure, how do you protect them from Scientology abuse?” Barnes-Ross says. “You can't report that abuse to your teacher, They are Scientologists and Scientologists cannot report Scientology to the police or authorities. You can't report it to the head, he is a Scientologist. You can't report it to the Trustees, they are Scientologists. You can't report it to the head trustee, he is the Church lawyer.”

As for the school’s insistence that it is “secular” and doesn’t teach religion, it is using controversial Scientology “technology,” such as confessional interrogations known as “overts and withholds” (O/Ws) whether it’s called religious or not.

“I think it’s important to note that Ethics conditions and O/Ws are some of the most abusive parts of Scientology. O/Ws is when you are locked in a room and forced to confess to ‘crimes’ and things you have done wrong — this happened to me at London Org. Ethics Conditions are punishments based on your performance (in this case, as a student). Although they may not be auditing at Greenfields, the fact they are implementing these specific Scientology techniques on children is heartbreaking,” Alex adds.

“So if the issue is mental abuse of students through using Scientology tech, who do they tell?”

But now, government agencies in the UK are beginning to take interest, and the result is a stunning one.

“It is a big deal to lose all your boarding school kids. They just put up their prices and now all parents will be charged VAT too under the new government,” an inside source close to the school says. “I think the school has about 150 kids if that. Maybe 120. It runs on a very tight budget. So losing about 30 percent of their kids is bad for them.”

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