Bursaries under threat from VAT on fees
The head teacher of Erskine Stewart Melville School (ESMS) in Edinburgh has warned that funding for bursaries could be cut following the imposition of VAT on tuition fees, The Herald has reported.
Anthony Simpson said he has witnessed a “very noticeable drop” in enrolments in ESMS’s junior school last year.
ESMS is a large co-educational school for three-to-18 year olds which has 2,700-pupils.
Simpson said the reduction in junior pupils “means we do have to look at compensatory reductions, a nice way of saying we have to make sure we have reductions in staffing”.
He added: “We have a requirement to have a certain amount of charitable support for students and for local schools and charities and so on. So we do supplement that, but that supplementation comes from income and therefore it creates pressure now.
“VAT on fees will impact our ability to invest money in that in terms of bursary funding.
“A lot of our parents who are struggling to pay are saying ‘are we paying for other children?’ and I justify that and say ‘yes but you’re sending your child to a charity’. But we’re not getting the benefit of being a charity now so it’s tougher to justify in some respects.”
Simpson was asked if the implication is fewer places for pupils of less well-off parents. He responded: “It’s a potential, we haven’t seen the true impact on next year’s figures.
“The jury’s out. We would expect parents to contact us now if they’re thinking of pulling out for next year. This is the term when people would contact us.”
However, Simpson maintained that he would do everything he could to avoid reducing bursaries because “it’s better for us, for the community, for everybody to have a whole range of people in the school who have different strengths, different backgrounds”.