A school in St Albans is offering a life-changing opportunity to lucky pupils.

The school welcomes and particularly encourages applications from pupils from the local community and surrounding area, who have the potential to benefit from the transformational experience that a St Albans School education could provide.

Successful candidates would be offered a bursary based on the condition that the pupil sits the school’s entrance examination and that the school’s academic requirements are met.

Bursaries are means-tested and may be awarded to a value of up to 100 per cent of tuition fees and are unlikely to be awarded for amounts less than 40 per cent.

Means-testing is a process by which the resources available to a family are fully disclosed to the school such that an assessment of the need for the bursary can be established and documented, and such that the extent of any bursary awarded can be matched to need.

The school may, at the discretion of the headmaster and the bursar, make additional awards over and above the cost of the tuition fees for specific activities, such as coach or bus travel or essential educational trips.

The process of the application for bursaries is entirely confidential, and if successful and the child comes to the school, the fact that the child is in receipt of a bursary is not disclosed without the explicit permission of the family.

As such, the child’s teachers and contemporaries would not be aware of the bursary.

Additional support can be available for uniform, lunches and school trips.

Headteacher Jonathan Gillespie: “St Albans School is strongly committed to the provision of bursary places for students who have the potential to benefit from the transformational experience that a St Albans School education can provide.

“We are fortunate to receive generous support from many former pupils and our wider community, many of whom benefitted themselves from these same opportunities and so are keen to fund pupils from the local area. Confidentiality is assured, both through the application process and during the entire time that a bursary recipient attends St Albans School. We look forward to receiving applications for entry in 2021 and encourage anyone interested to contact us for further information.”