Pupils offered £500 to enrol at free school

A NEW free school is offering high-performing pupils £500 to encourage them to take up places.

New College Doncaster will hand out a £500 ‘academic scholarship’ to all applicants on course to gain at least five A grades in their GCSEs.

Yesterday critics branded the incentive ‘bribery’ and not an ‘ethical’ use of public funds.

It is thought to be the first time a school has sought effectively to pay high- achieving pupils to sign up to attend.

Schools have previously offered money or prizes for good attendance or meeting exam targets, or given bursaries for travel and study materials.

New College Doncaster is hoping to open in 2016 with 500 sixth-formers, rising to 1,200 after three years.

Last month nearby New College Pontefract submitted an application to the Department for Education to set up the free school for 16 to 19-year-olds.

It said Doncaster ‘needs a new college because its young people are missing out on an outstanding sixth-form experience’.

Under the free schools pro- gramme, charities, parent groups or successful schools or colleges can apply to set up publicly-funded schools free from local-authority control.

It is claimed the necessary 1,000 signatures of support to back up the application has already been achieved.

The ‘ academic scholarship’ is advertised on a website for the proposed school, which states: ‘If you are predicted to achieve

‘Money from the public purse’

more than five A grades in your GCSEs, we will offer you the opportunity to receive £500 and a place in our Excellence Academy to support your post-16 education.’

The ‘Excellence Academy’ will offer a ‘bespoke programme’ to help students ‘become the next doctor, lawyer, scientist, accountant or world leader’.

The £500 award is intended as an ‘incentive’, according to the journal Academies Week. But Professor Stephen Gorard, of Durham University, said: ‘I can’t see that it would be an ethical use of funding given that it would cost money from the public purse that could have been spent on something else.’

He also raised concerns over ‘social segregation’ if the money lures bright pupils away from other schools.

Senior staff are not yet able to say how much the scheme would cost in total.

Richard Fletcher, vice principal at New College Pontefract, told Academies Week that all eligible students would be paid the £500 but the number of eligible sixthformers would not be known ‘until we opened’.

In an editorial, the journal condemned the incentive as ‘at best questionable’ and ‘ at worst an uncosted bribe’.

It questioned whether the £500 offer helped to gather the 1,000 signatures and urged the Department for Education to scrutinise the application.

New College Pontefract did not reply to requests for comment.