How to Kop a scholarship!
Top public school asks Liverpool’s soccer scouts to teach them how to spot poor but t alented youngsters
A LEADING public school has turned to Liverpool FC for help scouting for talented children from families unable to afford the fees.
The Premier League football club – whose Anfield ground has a stand that is famously known as the Kop – are t o share t heir scouting knowledge to find children who will receive a £35,000-a-year education at Stowe School for nothing.
The co-educational Buckinghamshire boarding school is creating a new £100 million bursary fund for an initial 100 pupils to be given an entirely free education.
The money is being raised through donations from former pupils and friends of the school.
Pupils from lower-income families will be selected after being interviewed and taking aptitude tests, rather than formal rigorous entrance examinations.
To ensure the co- educational boarding school does all it can to identify children who have ability but have been denied the opportunity to shine academically, the headmaster Dr Anthony Wallersteiner has taken the unusual move of turning to Premier League title contenders Liverpool.
The club – currently top of the table in a tense title race with rivals Manchester City – will allow Dr Wallersteiner and his staff full access to the scouting team and their skills and knowledge to help the quest for academic stars of the future.
The scouts will show Stowe’s teachers how and where to look for children with promise in some of the country’s most deprived innercity areas. Those children who are selected for the 100 per cent bursary scheme will be funded until the end of their education at the school.
For a child joining the school in his or her first year aged 13 and staying for five years until the end of the sixth form, the total cost at current fees would be £175,000.
The school was founded in 1923 and is housed in an imposing Grade I-listed building that was once the country seat of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.
Former pupils include David Niven and Richard Branson, composer Howard Goodall and Prince Harry’s former girlfriends Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas.
Dr Wallersteiner said yesterday: ‘For too long people have talked about the segregation between private and state schools and we want to create an integrated system of education which fosters, encourages and promotes talent from all sectors of society.
‘We also currently have about ten 100 per cent fee-supported pupils in the school, so we are looking to scale up the accessibility of private education so that we remain relevant in the national education conversation.’
Stowe i s planning recruit a further 400 pupils on a full bursary in the years ahead and is talking to other leading public schools to encourage them to offer similar schemes.
News of the bursary scheme comes as Labour is clamouring for VAT to be applied to school fees.
A report published this week by Oxford Economics found that private schools saved the taxpayer £3.5billion last year because children were not taking up places in state schools. Independent schools also supported 302,000 jobs.