Amberfield School was a small private school in Nacton

Nacton

Nacton is a civil parish in the Suffolk Coastal region of Suffolk, England, taking its name from the village within it. The parish is bounded by the neighbouring parishes of Levington to the east and Bucklesham in the north. It is located between the towns of Ipswich and Felixstowe.Nacton abuts...

, England, coeducational up to the age of 7 years, and for girls up to the age of 16 years, which was established in 1927 and closed in 2011 due to financial problems. The last headmistress was Linda Ingram. It was set in countryside with surrounding fields and wildlife. It won the Lego League Robotics UK Championships and the World Primary Robot Dance Championship held in Suzhou, China as part of RoboCup Junior

RoboCup Junior

RoboCup Junior is a division of RoboCup, a not-for-profit robotics organisation. It focuses on education and aims to introduce the larger goals of the RoboCup project to primary and secondary school aged children...

 in 2008. The school occupied the site of Nacton Workhouse, near some woodland where the body of one of the victims of the Ipswich 2006 serial murders

Ipswich 2006 serial murders

The Ipswich serial murders took place between 30 October and 10 December 2006 when the bodies of five murdered women were discovered at different locations near Ipswich, Suffolk, England. All the victims were women who worked as prostitutes in the Ipswich area. Their bodies were discovered naked,...

, was found. The school is a member of the Girls' Schools Association

Girls' Schools Association

The Girls' Schools Association is the professional association of the heads of independent girls' schools in the UK and overseas and is a constituent member of the Independent Schools Council .-History:...

.

Sport

The school was successful in tennis with the under-15 team reaching the quarter-finals of the national competition in 2007.

Notable former pupil

• Maggi Hambling
  Maggi Hambling
  Maggi Hambling CBE is an English painter and sculptor. Perhaps her best known public works are a memorial to Oscar Wilde in central London and Scallop, a 4 metre high steel sculpture of two interlocking scallop shells on Aldeburgh beach dedicated to Benjamin Britten...
  
  , artist

School closure

On 12 October 2011 the school website was replaced by a press release headed “Amberfield School to close”. It stated that “Amberfield School will close on 31 October 2011 and go into liquidation thereafter due to unsustainable losses”. BBC Look East that evening reported that the debts were over £1 million and that the school would in fact close on Friday 14th October 2011, which it did. At the time of closure there were 32 teaching staff and 23 non teaching staff, also 157 pupils, 70 down on earlier levels.

On Saturday 15th October 2011 a news report headed “Comeback hopes as school is closed in debt crisis” stated that given just 48 hours' notice a group of parents had tried to raise £200,000 to keep the school running until Christmas, but with parents concerned for their children’s education seeking places at other nearby independent schools, closure of Amberfield was inevitable. The parent group subsequently stated it would not give up hope of seeing the school reopen in the New Year.