Bursaries mean private schools ‘more diverse’ than grammars

PRIVATE schools are now more socially diverse than grammars, a leading headmistress has claimed.

Sally-anne Huang, head of the £18,000-a-year James Allen’s Girls’ School (JAGS) in south London, said that pupils at fee-paying schools mix with peers from a range of backgrounds since there are so many pupils receiving bursaries.

She said that 16 per cent of her girls are on bursaries, and the average bursary makes up 85 per cent of the cost of fees. But far from this putting parents off sending their daughters there, it is in fact sought after, she said.

“They think it indicates the moral compass of the school and also they prefer for their daughters to be educated in a socially diverse community.”

Parents would rather their children mix with pupils from a range of ethnic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds because that better reflects modern British society, she said.

Also speaking at the annual Girls’ School Association conference in London yesterday, Sue Hincks, head of the girls’ division of the £12,000-a-year Bolton School, said: “In a school like ours which offers one in five bursaries, of which the majority are going to children on free school meals, we know we have a very socially diverse population in front of us.”

She said that proportion of pupils at her school on bursaries compares “very favourably” with local grammar schools, “where many of the children are there because they are able but they are also in the catchment area”.

Three quarters of independent schools in England are registered as charities, earning them favourable business rates and VAT exemptions on fees.

To qualify as a charity they must demonstrate that they provide “public benefit” to a reasonably wide section of the public, rather than to a narrow group of wealthy individuals.

Traditionally, this has been done by offering bursaries and fee discounts to children from disadvantaged families.