Talk to me about bursaries and scholarships?

I looked at 3 near us and the discount was pretty low - 10% and was reviewed each year. Bursaries were for very specific incomes and lower than yours. If your salary went up you’d also have to tell them. That was our experience anyway.

I would also seek to move if I were you. I think that even if you check out the situation with scholarships or burseries now, there may well be a shift by the time you would want one. The VAT situation is highly likely to impact on monies available for that kind of thing.

@Ubertomusic I would feel pretty aggrieved if I was paying full fees and someone was receiving a bursary whilst sat in a £1m house with no mortgage, driving a Range Rover and had £500k sat in the bank.

It would be the exception rather than the norm - from someone who used to audit bursary applications.

Not everywhere.

Bursaries are not just about income though. Your savings and assets are also taken into consideration (including equity in your home).

This is a school near me, household income must be under 60k to qualify for a bursary and for full fee remission under 27k.

Each school will have its own criteria, as others have said.

https://stockportgrammar.co.uk/senior-school/admissions/bursaries-and-scholarships/

Second this. SPGS offers bursaries up to 140K, Christ's Hospital gives 100% to boarders etc.

OP you need to research particular schools, and consider boarding too.

There is no universal process.

I understand every school is different. But there are posters stating upper income thresholds of £80k and advising that salary wouldn’t attract full fee reduction. It’s not true.

They will be accurate for the experience of those parents. Independent schools are independent hence they all have their own processes and policies in regards to scholarships and bursaries. There is no 1 way of assessing or awarding them.

NC for this post for obvious reasons.

OP, you really need some advice from parents that have been in the specific situation. Some of the replies on this thread are not completely accurate.

My daughter has just been awarded an academic scholarship and 100% bursary at a top 50 girls day school (not GDST). I am a single parent, but household income is ~£75k. You do not need to be super low income to qualify.

Just bear in mind that VAT is severely limiting the availability of both scholarships and bursaries, especially in the smaller ones. The big prestigious ones are so far still offering them as per but around us the number are being reduced dramatically.
The only way you will know is to speak to a number of schoolsm. There is no standard way of doing anything because they are independent (unless they are part of a chain eg GDST).

As those above have mentioned, scholarships are non means tested and tend to come with a minimal discount. Where I work it's more that they receive extra coaching/trips etc beyond the considerable amount already offered to everyone.

Bursaries are means tested and you are considered for it if you pass the exam/interview and are below a certain threshold. I think it's quite high (80k?) but you would only get a small bursary at the top end, for a full bursary it's a much lower household income. There are far more students applying for bursaries who meet the school's academic criteria than funding available. There are some funds for things like trips and uniforms for those on bursaries but it absolutely doesn't cover everything. I think at very wealthy schools they might be able to offer more of this (but tbh there are not that many extremely wealthy independent schools which take girls!). It's the Etons of the world who could basically not charge fees if they didn't want to.

If you have the choice I think I'd move into the catchment of a better state school - easier said than done! If you say where you live some people might be able to offer more specific advice on schools. Appreciate you might not want to.

We live near several public schools and when we were looking at secondary schools for our daughter several years ago, academic scholarships were awarded to the most academically able children, irrespective of parental income, and at the time, were generally for up to 30% of the fees, although this may have changed by now. Several of the schools also offered music or sports scholarships which reduced the fees by about 10%.

Bursaries were offered on the basis of income, and one of the girls in my daughter's class in primary school was given a 100% bursary for one of the schools we were considering. At this school (and I assume others) the bursary wasn't dependent on academic ability but was based on parental income, and any child who passed the entrance exam and was offered a place could apply for a bursary. I remember that the threshold was very low at the time.

Scholarships are potential/performance based and shouldn’t be linked to affordability, They are often a smallish discount (10%, say) and I don’t think many go over 30%

Bursaries are means tested and the number of them and percentage covered will vary by school. Some schools might offer more 50 % bursaries and no 100% bursaries, for example. It is likely that almost all schools will reduce bursary provision after VAT and NIC rises kick in.

I think a 60k household income would put you in the running for bursaries, given school fees (in the SE at least) are £20k+ pa for secondary.

You may be surprised to learn there are parents paying day school fees on much smaller incomes than yours!

Anyway - the best way for you to find out how things work is to read about a dozen independent school websites from start to finish - paying particular attention to their application processes, bursary and scholarship provision and their general ethos. That will answer all the questions you’ve raised here, and you’ll get a feel for the general idea. But every single school has its own individual procedure - there is no ‘typical’ in this area.

Not that much of this will be relevant to you for a good few years if you’re hoping for a bursary - they don’t normally start until year 7 or 8 in prep schools, as it’s probably quite hard to assess academic potential, personality and willingness to compete before that age.

I suspect your income would be rather too high to garner much fee reduction for day schools - so you may want to include boarding schools in your research.

Do you have any preference for single sex or co-ed schools at this stage. Obviously in the long run you’ll be guided by your child’s personality and abilities - but if you give some idea of where in the country you’re considering, people may be able to help you make a list of places to research.