Scholarships and bursaries

Requests for our financial support usually fall into two categories:

• New applicants to the school whose parents or guardians are unable to fund the tuition fees.

• Existing pupils where a change in parents’ or guardians’ circumstances has resulted in difficulty in meeting tuition fees and may result in the child being withdrawn part-way through a stage of education.

We will only consider applications from parents or guardians who have already registered their child for entry and paid the registration fee (currently £120). Once you have submitted your application for a place, please contact our Project Accountant to request a Bursary Application Form.

For Lower Sixth entry, you need to submit your completed form by 30 November prior to the following September entry point.

When we write to you in mid-February about your child’s performance in the Entrance Examination or Sixth Form entry interview, we will also inform you of our decision about your bursary application.

When you apply for a bursary we will ask you to complete a questionnaire about your circumstances which covers areas such as your income, the size of your family, your savings and investments and any special circumstances that we need to consider. We will need evidence in support of the income and asset figures that you submit. We will then assess your case. We reserve the right to seek further documentary evidence, and to make enquiries that we deem necessary. Should you be offered and accept a bursary, you inherently agree to repeat this questionnaire and assessment process each year. If your circumstances change, we may increase or decrease the level of our support.

Our bursaries are financed through a limited fund, which receives surplus income, interest (and occasionally capital) from a small endowment fund. As the sums involved are relatively modest not all applications for bursaries will be successful. We have a scale of awards, which sets out how much we should award for any given level of a family’s financial circumstances, and we use this to decide whether and how much to award each case. Each year, we review and revise this scale to reflect any changes in our fees and costs. Though awards are generally tied to this scale, they may be varied upwards or downwards depending on individual parents’ or guardians’ circumstances such as:

• Income, savings, investments and realisable assets
• Size of family, any other persons dependent on them and like factors
• Compassionate or other pertinent considerations.

The process and final awards remain confidential. Final decisions are made by our Governors’ Bursaries Committee which has a very small membership and includes the Headmaster and Bursar.