BURSARY FORMS - section on responsibilities...

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We both earn full time salaries but when I put my income and then expenditure, then no money left to pay the fees. What can count as responsibilities? I actually created a clear document showing income and expenditure...will it look ridiculous if I put food, clothing etc in expenditure? Well but it is reality - we have not got money for paying school fees...

Schools have different definitions.

Your best bet is to ring the bursar and ask what can be included in this section.

Most schools broadly ignore the expenses section, they will have their own view on what a reasonable level of spending is based on the number of children in the family.

As carol says, most already have their own 'allowance' per sibling, and view on what is reasonable for normal living costs for the household. Iirc one I filled in the responsibilities was for any expense you had that couldn't be used for school fees, but was over reasonable household budget and not mentioned elsewhere on the form, so eg paying for a care home, medical costs, child maintenance, siblings school fees etc rather than paying off a luxury car, saving for a holiday etc. Definitely check with bursar though.

If you have equity in your property many schools take this into account. We just went through the bursary process and my season ticket cost (plus lots more) was ignored as I could in theory cycle the twelve miles to work and back if I really wanted to...needless to say we didn't qualify and we don't fancy moving into a much smaller property and away from our local area so fair enough there will be others who don't have our choices and I wish them well - we have some excellent state grammars on our doorstep so it isn't the end of the world for us.