“We’ve just lost 170 boarders who have gone back to their home countries and may or may not return - we are suddenly in very challenging times.”

Kevin Samson, co-principal of Buckswood School, an independent secondary boarding school in East Sussex, has spoken to Tes about the impact of coronavirus on his school.

Around 100 of his staff (out of 160) have been furloughed under the government’s CJRS scheme while a “handful” of non-teaching staff have been made redundant.

Coronavirus: Hundreds of private schools ‘bust by Christmas’

Related: Private schools ‘wrestling’ with fee cuts

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He said: “It’s a challenge right now given that schools like ours are invoicing for next term, and that’s what our cash flow depends upon.

“It’s an unknown as to how successful that will be [the invoicing] with parents who are finding themselves losing jobs.”

Mr Samson said international parents whose children were still being remotely educated by schools may now be looking at educating their children in their own countries.

He added: “Do parents want to pay for an online education, which they could potentially get for free in their own country? There are a lot of unknowns, and we have to plan with a very limited cash flow at present.

“We are speaking with our bank right now, but the banks are delaying various things in terms of finance and they’re trying to put personal guarantees upon loans and all sorts of things.

“Our main challenge now is maintaining liquidity through the business

“With this government scheme {CJRS] you have to fund the payroll yourself and they pay you back. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem for us, but I’m not the business manager.”

The Department for Education says it is doing “all it can” to help the independent school sector as insiders say hundreds of independent schools could be ‘bust by Christmas’.