Bursary application for divorced parent

[11plusandcounting]

I'm divorced, ex is hardly involved in the children's life but pays the child maintenance.
Does he need to provide his financial statement if I want to apply for the bursary?
His salary is so much more than mine is. It may ruin my dd's chances to get the bursary andI will have to pay the fees, he would never agree to contribute.
Did anyone have the same experience?

Bursaries are discretionary and decided by each school, so I don't think anyone here can answer you.

I looked through the application form for a bursary when I was trying to work out whether we might be eligible - obviously it was just specific to one school but it was structured along the lines of declaring all your own assets and income, and with a section to explain whether there's some legitimate reason why you can't easily increase your income (eg if working part time) or use your assets (if they are significant); then a section to declare all the other close relations who might reasonably be asked to contribute to fees (other parent if separated, and all grandparents) with a free text box and the question "reason, if any, why they cannot or will not contribute to school fees" or somesuch. if your application form is similar then you could simply write "is barely involved in the child's life, does not prioritise education and would not agree to contribute" and this might be acceptable in the assessment for some schools but not for others.

I can see both possible points of view. It's always good to be able to facilitate an able child to access a great education, but there are plenty of pupils in state schools who have parents who could have afforded school fees but had other priorities and didn't want to. There's not an obvious answer to the question of why a child who has a parent in this category who is separated from the other parent is inherently a different case than a child whose parents aren't separated but who similarly have other priorities. But some schools may be more lenient, and there's no harm done to apply.

we didn't apply, because the application form included that you had to sign agreeing to the statement that if a bursary wasn't granted then the child wouldn't be able to accept any place offered, and I certainly didn't want to risk not being offered a place if we didn't meet the criteria for a bursary - but we were able to afford the fees by slashing back our pension contributions, holidays budget and other discretionary spending, and rearranging our mortgage for lower monthly payments, so I couldn't honestly sign that statement. it's entirely possible that there are kids at the school who are no worse off than us whose parents were willing to sign such a statement.

I was in the same boat 7 years ago and my ex didn't have to provide a financial statement, I just had to declare what maintenance he paid for the children.

Thank you very much for your replies. I really hope the schools will see my point that the other parent has other priorities in life rather than paying school fees for children he doesn't care much about.