Private school bursaries and charitable status

lostinrates

melb wrote: »

that's good - but everyone can see what car Daddy drives and that can be enough to work it out!

Not really. In my experience lots of our parents drove shabby cars because they made sacrifices to pay our school fees. this was often where they could afford to live, what they drove and where they went or didn't go, on holiday. In fact, those who didn't struggle often also drove ''shabby'' cars as it wasn't a priority for them, and keeping expenditure on things that aren't important to them low is how they don't struggle over things that are worth it to them.

monkeymagic11

Hi - I'm a Bursar in an independent school so I do know exactly how we allocate our bursaries (although every school is different)

Firstly our scholarships are completely separate to our bursaries in that we award amounts based on academic merit (or sports, art excellence etc) regardless of the family income. The maximum scholarship is 20%

We will top up a scholarship with a bursary based on means testing but otherwise bursaries are assessed completely separately.

I try to assess all our bursary applications in one go assessing income and assets. Existing bursary holders are reassessed first. Then I look at all other applications and order them in order of how much is needed. I don't have their exam result at this stage so it doesn't depend on that - that is used to assess the scholarships.

In an ideal world we would give everyone a discount according to how much they need. However we are limited by funds available which is why people who might be eligible for 100% would only be offered 50%. We don't do that thinking that parents will then turn it down we hope that they will still be able to come.

Contrary to popular belief, independent schools don't always make tonnes of money and have huge endowment funds from which to make bursaries. All our bursaries come out of a budget set by myself each year - this equates to around 5% of our fee income. So effectively existing parents are funding the bursaries.

Independent schools have always been classed as charities. This is because education is a charitable act. It was only relatively recently (2005ish) that the government tasked the charity commission with assessing public benefit and while there are a variety of things associated with public benefit (such as sharing facilities with the community) the main focus is on widening access through bursaries. The commission seem to focus on a set percentage of total fees offered as a discount to parents but seem to want some big discounts as well (including 100% bursaries). Therefore from a "satisfying the charity commission" point of view, offering loads of bursaries hoping they wouldn't be accepted would be pointless as they only look at the actual total amounts awarded.

I'm not going to go into the whole "charities" argument here because it's not relevant - suffice to say we can't just opt out of being a charity because all our assets are tied up as charitable assets.

We try and give at least one full bursary a year not just because we want to keep our charitable status but because we think that the children who would benefit from the education we offer.

At my school, we don't kick children out if their grades aren't up to scratch but we might remove a scholarship. In that case, we would assess whether a bursary was appropriate and so the child wouldn't have to leave because their grades dropped.

As said below, only a very few people in school know which children have bursaries -Me, the Head, and his PA - not even the teachers are told.

My little girl is at the school and we don't have a huge amount of money. I have to agree with everyone who has posted below about the "extras" which aren't covered by a bursary - uniforms, trips and lunches. They are a killer - I am 8 weeks pregnant and we've had to have serious conversations about this as we will really struggle if they are both at the same school (even with a bursary should we get it - I can't award myself one!).

I know this is getting really long-winded (sorry ) but the absolute worst part of my job is the conversations with parents who have to withdraw their children because they can't pay the fees. This year we have had a lot of parents being made redundant and we can't help them all. We genuinely care about the children and don't want a disruption in their education but we are a business and have to remain solvent. I know there is an impression of the "Big Bad Bursar" but as a child who went to independent school on a full scholarship myself, I just want to set the record straight and say that we're not all completely incompassionate, unfeeling bean counters!

By the way there are other sources of funding - a good website is http://www.educational-grants.org/ - and there are other bodies who provide funds specifically for professions or faiths.

Happy to answer any questions - from the other side of the fence as it were.

ManicMum

thanks for replies.

I've read all your points of view. There was no exam so it was not due to exam results.

I feel it is better to help a few people with substantial bursaries than give more people lower ones if it then means they can't attend without selling their home or resorting to crime. We literally would have had to go to interest only mortgage and ditch pension scheme which seems ridiculous. Even then we weren't sure we could make the payments.

We do have a small amount of savings but were told this wouldn't be a factor unless they were over x amount.

oh well, it obviously isn't for us. I am not going to make my family's life a misery not being able to afford an ice cream at the beach just because of school fees. I don't want to live like that.

As someone said, if you have ability you will succeed anyway. :T

emsywoo123

ManicMum wrote: »

thanks for replies.

I've read all your points of view. There was no exam so it was not due to exam results.

I feel it is better to help a few people with substantial bursaries than give more people lower ones if it then means they can't attend without selling their home or resorting to crime. We literally would have had to go to interest only mortgage and ditch pension scheme which seems ridiculous. Even then we weren't sure we could make the payments.

We do have a small amount of savings but were told this wouldn't be a factor unless they were over x amount.

oh well, it obviously isn't for us. I am not going to make my family's life a misery not being able to afford an ice cream at the beach just because of school fees. I don't want to live like that.

As someone said, if you have ability you will succeed anyway. :T

I am glad you are happier with the situ OP

FWIW, I think alot of this post makes sense.

Spendless

How old is your eldest Manicmum and what was your reason for being interested in an Independant school?

The parents of my son's friends (the ones that looked round the boarding school I mentioned earlier) said the class sizes were 8 in every subject and if the child fell below average they pulled them out and gave them 1:1 till they caught up. Having recently experienced having a tutor for my son for his literacy, I am amazed how much they progress in a short space of time if they have 1 on 1 attention. DS got a 3A for his mock sats far lower than before and even surprising his teacher who had predicted high 4 low 5. I put it down as a blip as he hadn't liked the subject matter on his test paper, but then I saw him struggling with his literacy homework in the same manner 2 weeks on the trot. As we were approaching easter hols and with all the short weeks there's been recently there wasn't time to approach his school and ask if there was any help, so I rang the number of someone advertising in a shop window and though I thought she'd be able to raise him a bit I am staggered by how much in a short space of time.

onlyroz

ManicMum wrote: »

I feel it is better to help a few people with substantial bursaries than give more people lower ones if it then means they can't attend without selling their home or resorting to crime. We literally would have had to go to interest only mortgage and ditch pension scheme which seems ridiculous. Even then we weren't sure we could make the payments.

I think it's a bit extreme to say that people would resort to crime if they couldn't afford the school fees. It is perfectly possible to succeed in the state education system. I went to a state school and managed to achieve top grades and attend a top university.

emsywoo123

onlyroz wrote: »

I think it's a bit extreme to say that people would resort to crime if they couldn't afford the school fees. It is perfectly possible to succeed in the state education system. I went to a state school and managed to achieve top grades and attend a top university.

I think the OP was making reference to a low proportion of subsidised fees.......that people may resort to crime to fund the outstanding........which I agree is ridiculous!

Kimberley82

emsywoo123 wrote: »

I think the OP was making reference to a low proportion of subsidised fees.......that people may resort to crime to fund the outstanding........which I agree is ridiculous!

Not that ridiculous, someone I was at school withs dad went to jail for selling drugs to pay the fees and life style.

emsywoo123

Kimberley82 wrote: »

Not that ridiculous, someone I was at school withs dad went to jail for selling drugs to pay the fees and life style.

I think that is possibly the exception rather than the rule

rozmister

A bit off topic but in response to comments about kids not knowing who gets scholarships they may not know but they are surprisingly good at recognising the 'different kids'.

When I was at college I knew a girl through clubbing whose dad was a big D n B club promoter & had a record label. He'd come from a council estate & made all his money putting on events in grimy clubs & fields & recording non-mainstream D n B djs. He used his profits to put her through the best all girls school in the county...where she was bullied throughout her schooling for her background. A lot of the other kids who went came from normal middle class backgrounds & so she was marked out as different. Sad but that's the way it is. Kids can be cruel.