Scholarship for independent primary school

[Naomi00]

Good morning everyone,
I am in need of your advice please. I contacted an independent school very close to my home sometime last year, to find out if they offered bursary and asked what other financial help was available to me. I was advised to sign up for the upcoming scholarship test and get my 4 children to sit the test. I was then called into a meeting with the headteacher congratulating us for the outstanding result my children got. Prior to this, we were told scholarship plus bursary could pay up to 80% of the tuitions fees which was the reason i went ahead in the first place.

Now to my dilemma, the bursar then emailed and said the school couldnt afford up to 80% but was prepared to offer between 5% -25% and that after going through our financial statement that we submitted to him, he didnt think we could afford that for all 4.

I told him if we could afford it, we wouldnt have asked for bursary and scholarship in the first instance. I am just gutted right now and confused as to why we were treated so unfairly. Has anyone experienced this kind of treatment? Can anyone please advise me on what to do next? Pls help

The good and outstanding state schools in my area are overly subcribed. Been on the waiting list since we moved into the area(2yrs ago)had to quit my job so i could do school runs. Their current school is 20mins drive away from home. I am now tired and want to go back to work.

Pls help!

Quitting a job to do school runs is very rarely economically sensible. Even at minimum wage that is effectively costing the family £60 a day.

I don't think that you will get significant financial help to go private. Most schools would expect you to be maximising your income (eg not choosing to be a SAHP) before you can be considered for help.

The issue from the school's pov is that there is nothing to choose between your kids and hundreds if not thousands of other kids in local state schools who are reasonably bright but whose parents can't afford the fees. They may have some funds for support but it makes much more sense for them to use that to offer a 10% discount to 10 families for whom the fees are on the cusp of affordability. The process you have just been through was effectively a marketing exercise to persuade you to commit to parting with every penny you have to scrape together to afford this. It was for the school's benefit, not yours.

Schools use their scholarship and bursary programme to help make themselves look good and thus attract more full-fees students. Targeted assistance for the musical or sports gifted and talented help the school to win competitions so could you invest in nurturing your children as rising stars in one of these extracurricular areas?

A bright child with engaged and encouraging parents doesn't need to be at an outstanding school to thrive, at least at primary level. You may be better to stick with state for now and focus on helping your children to get amazing results for y7 or y9 entry to private senior schools. Help will be much easier to find if your children are clearly on track to get nine A* / level 9 grades at GCSE as well as propelling the school to the top of the rugby/cricket league table and being able to publish news articles about their marvelous talented musicians going off to the National Youth Orchestra every hols.

It's all about the marketing.

Hi Yinmini,

I am not a stay at home mum as you think, i am currently at university studying to be a Teacher. I will take ur comments/advice on board. My very brilliant son is currently enrolled at another private school, starting after easter. His tuition is the only one we can afford at the moment. Will still keep trying for the others. Many thanks for the advice once again