In 2005, the School was one of fifty independent schools to be found guilty of operating a price-fixing cartel, discovered by "The Times", under which schools had made fee increases or decreases concurrently, thus minimising competition. Each school was required to pay a nominal penalty of £10,000 and all agreed to make ex-gratia payments totalling £3 million into a trust designed to benefit pupils who attended the schools during the period in respect of which fee information was shared. The discovery by "The Times" was made shortly after new Office of Fair Trading directives prohibiting such sharing of information a directive not clearly communicated according to the schools concerned, a fact omitted by many tabloids.