How do schools verify savings when assessing bursary applications?

[Loopylooni]

Just a question here to those who worked in the bursary field, do you have full visibility of all the applicants accounts? What if they have say 10million in savings which they hadn't declared on the application? How would you know? My neighbour is much wealthier than me and they got a bursary at another school. Im curious how they managed it.

How, specifically, do you know the details of your neighbour’s finances?

@BlanklyMyDear I dont really but both working in finance, nice cars. Holidays to Monaco. I just wondered if there were people who could just not declare things.

One would have thought the school would say no costly holidays if they are paying school fees

so I get your point

That'll be why they've got no savings!

Probably offshore accounts. They could be accused of fraud if they knowingly did not declare it.

Our school had a family receive a bursary, became suspicious when the kids were talking about their posh holidays etc, and demanded to see all up to date credit card and bank statements.

The family couldn’t then explain how some of their credit card bills were being paid off - there was no money going out from their disclosed bank statements but the bills were being paid, so obviously other bank accounts or assets had been hidden during the bursary application.

The child lost the bursary and the place, and the school threatened to sue for the bursary money back. Eventually there was a kind of face saving “apologies for the confusion” donation to school funds, and the school agreed not to sue. They still told the other local private schools to watch out for that family, last I heard they left the city.

So it definitely does happen, but schools can find out and take action afterwards.

Thank you - this is interesting to hear