How do private school bursaries work?

[kisaki333]

Combined household income in close to 100k but it's not evenly split. (More like 20-80). So take home pay is smaller than 2 parents on 50k each.

I am thinking about sending the little one to a local pre-prep but realistically we cant afford the full fees after the first years (and even those are a stretch). I mean we could, but we would have 0 left over for savings, pension, emergencies and anything really, but the mortgage and day-to-day expenses.

School fees are 20k pa from y3 and about 14k pa until then.

From your experience, could i be awared a bursary? If the fees were half, for example, that would be more manageable. Obviously i will ask the school too but want to get a realistic idea.

Do they allow for things like savings and holidays when they review your situation? Or do they expect you to stop saving and just pour all the money in their pockets?

It really is different from school to school. My sons school is an all through school but will only give bursaries from year 7. I found a lot of prep or pre prep don’t even do them.

Are you in London? If so, the scale would go in your favour. If not, you may find it hard to get 50%!

Again, my son’s school will not offer anyone a bursary if the total family income is over £75k.

As for the bursary application itself; it is very invasive. You have to give evidence for everything. What car do you drive, do you go on holidays, do you own a house, can you release equity etc etc, last three month bank statements for all accounts… and so on. If there’s any possible way you can sacrifice, they will want you to.

Each will vary but many preps are less generous with bursaries than seniors and even then 100k is likely to be above the ceiling for help.

At my school - no, you’re over the salary threshold at £100k total household income regardless of who earns what within that £100k. We also look at your assets (equity in house, savings, cars, etc). So if you earn £50k but have £500k equity in your house, you’re not getting much of a bursary if you even get anything - and rightly so.

You’d need to be earning under £90k with no assets to qualify for anything at all, and under £65k to get anything close to a 50% bursary.

And yes, the process is very invasive, you have to declare everything, and we require you to resubmit your detailed financial information every year. Our bursary partner company will check everything!! Also, although we reassess your eligibility every year, your bursary award can only ever stay the same or go down; it cannot go up regardless of whether your personal circumstances change. It’s well worth asking about this if you do decide to apply to private schools.

What previous posters said; everything is scrutinised, no luxury cars, holidays, no building work on your house, savings absolutely considered. Also if you are part time or in a low paid job you'll be asked about plans to increase your salary/hours and timeframe for this to happen.

Thank you all, that confirms my suspicions. We don't have/do anything luxury at the moment. We live relatively frugally and pour everything left over into savings/pension so little one has a better start in life than we did. Not sure I am prepared to give it all up just so she can go to private school, nice as it may be. Mayve when she's older she'll be clever enough to get a scholarship type of place somewhere

Scholarships are often 5-10% or so, rarely more than 30%

I would highly recommend state until either 11+ or 13+ …. secondary in my opinion are the most important years. With supportive parents DC will do well in state primary. My DC went state until 13+ , we saved/invested for the fees - they’ve has been there for 3 years now and loving/appreciating all the extras This way you will be able to give them the best of both and they will be more grounded and aware of their opportunities.

many bursaries don't start until secondary school & discount at the 100k level tends to be 10/20%

‘just pour all the money in their pockets’ what a strange turn of phrase to use. you are paying for a service.

I would save for private secondary. Scholarships in my area are 5-10% and depending on the school you can apply for sports, art, drama, music or academic. Frankly the levels are very high and I am glad when my DD passes 11+ not even dreaming of a scholarship.

@ladyamyin my thread i clearly say I can't afford the full fees without giving up everything but the very basics. My comment is not odd in this context.

You would be very unlikely to get a 50% discount in a prep on 100k though?

It’s your choice to go private 🤷🏻‍♀️

You do realise the whole point of private school is that you pay for it, yes?

@ladyamycould you please go bother someone else? You contributed nothing to this thread except some poorly veiled judgement. You are not welcome here and I won't engage a troll.

@kisaki333 ask the school first, it may be a school that's not as in demand so they may have additional larger bursary pot. This is what happened to me, but they only offered 3 years then I had to submit all my forms/be interviewed and it all went up significantly higher. I didn't expect this to happen!

I was not working at the time, single parent with no support from ex but i have a house with no mortgage. The bursar explained they have people in similar situations but renting, so they took priority. Similarly I have a friend where their income is around £36k gross, yet the house is paid off, and they didn't get a bursary.

Luckily I got a good job soon after so was able to then keep the children in the school however pretty much everything goes on fees and bills, no saving each month.

Thank you @Hallibo, very useful! I will certainly ask the school but just wanted to get an idea of how it works first.

@kisaki333 my experience was that they were lovely (bursary checking) but that lulled me into a false sense of security! I thought without a job, id get one but the house was the biggest thing to work against me.

I work in this area. First thing is, it makes no difference how your income is split - the school will just look at household income.

At my school (secondary with a fairly generous bursary scheme) you might qualify for some discount but unlikely to be as much as 50%. It would depend heavily on things like how much equity you've got in your house, whether you're working and your levels of saving.

To answer your question - yes, our bursary scheme would allow for an emergency savings buffer and a modest allowance for holidays - but not loads of savings, big house projects, long haul holidays, fancy cars and high lifestyle expenditure. If you have loads of equity in your house or masses in savings, we'd expect some of that to be released to pay for fees.

If that seems harsh, then don't forget that bursaries are usually partly funded by a percentage taken out of other parents' fees - including parents who are using all the money they have apart from mortgage and basic day to day spending in order to fund school fees. Put bluntly, why should those parents be giving up their savings in order to fund your savings? The same is true of endowment funds, which have often been donated by people who want to make private school possible for people who have no other way of affording it - not those who could afford the fees would prefer to still be able to build up lots of savings

I think you'd be very unlikely to get much if any discount at prep level - maybe a bit at secondary level, but it depends on those other factors.

Great post @tiia

ask the school first, it may be a school that's not as in demand so they may have additional larger bursary pot.

@Hallibo if the school isn’t in demand (ie if they are not full or nearly full) then they are less likely to have the “spare money” to fund bursaries.

The other thing to be aware of is they don’t just give a bursary out to anyone who wants to go to the school and can’t afford it. 93% of the population are in state school presumably (at least partly) because they can’t afford it. Your child needs to be able to prove that they have something that they can add to school life that would genuinely enhance it. (And that they can’t get from a fee paying student.) So brilliant academics / grade 8 at 17 instruments / future Olympian.

Most private schools don’t offer bursaries until senior years. Then they are based on a mix of merit (academic, sport, or performing arts) and wealth.

The finance review is very though and none of the schools we looked at would have given bursaries with that income. They’d expect you to remortgage your house, borrow money, have an older car and have no holidays before they even looked at your salary.

@Mumofteenandtween that's not necessarily true. In some schools the bursaries are talent-linked - but there are plenty of others (mine included) where you don't need to do any more than pass the same entrance tests as everyone else and also meet the financial criteria. The perception that bursaries are only for geniuses or sports stars can unfortunately put people off applying.