The bursary conversation in London has changed in tone since January 2025. Not because the rules have changed — most schools' bursary policies look, line for line, much as they did in 2023 — but because the set of families for whom the question is live has widened sharply.
The numbers first. The ISC's 2025 census recorded £1.5bn in fee assistance across its member schools, up 11.5 per cent on 2024. Of that, £1.1bn (roughly three-quarters) was funded by schools themselves rather than by external donors or foundations. The average means-tested bursary was worth £13,852 a year, up 7.3 per cent. More than a third of pupils at ISC schools now receive some form of fee help. [ISC Census 2025]
That last figure flatters the picture. "Some form of fee help" includes scholarships (typically 5–20 per cent honorific awards attached to academic, music, or sport performance), sibling discounts, and clergy or forces reductions. The share receiving a full or near-full bursary — the case most families mean when they ask the question — is significantly smaller, and concentrated in a handful of very well-endowed schools.
Who the large awards go to
Eton remains the clearest published example. Around 20 per cent of its pupils are on means-tested support, with bursaries ranging from 5 to 100 per cent of fees. A number of boys pay no fees at all. The assessment is run externally; a home visit forms part of it. Eton does not publish a hard income threshold, and has said publicly that there is no family-income level above which an application will not be entertained — though in practice the full-fee-equivalent awards cluster at household incomes below roughly £80,000 before tax. [Eton College, Financial Aid; Bursaries Guidance 2023; Mumsnet threads on Eton bursaries, various]
Among London day schools, the pattern is similar in shape if smaller in scale. Dulwich College, City of London, Westminster, and St Paul's each publish bursary schemes; each run awards up to 100 per cent of fees; each, in our reading of their published schedules, report the great majority of awards at partial levels of 20–70 per cent of fees. [Good Schools Guide coverage; individual school bursary pages]
"We qualified. We did not expect to qualify. The threshold moved without a press release and our old adviser did not flag it." — composite, drawn from Mumsnet Bursaries threads, spring 2025
What has shifted in the last year
Three things are visible in the post-VAT data, and a fourth in the conversation rather than the data.
First, application volumes for bursaries at the top London senior schools rose across the 2024–25 registration cycle. Schools we have spoken to (on background) reported bursary enquiries up by a third, and formal applications up by a smaller but still material margin.
Second, the upper threshold for partial awards has crept up at several schools. Where £100,000 of household income might, five years ago, have been the soft ceiling for any bursary conversation, £125,000–£150,000 is now, in several London senior schools, not outside the range for a small (10–20 per cent) award — if other circumstances warrant it.
Third, foundation schools — those with legacy endowments or active development offices — have fared better than schools relying solely on fee income to fund the scheme. That divergence will, over a five-year horizon, show up in the published bursary share at individual schools.
Fourth, and harder to quantify, is a slight change in tone from registrars. The question "is it worth applying?" used to produce a fairly guarded response. In 2025 it more often produces an encouragement to try — with the caveat that the process is genuinely means-tested, and that the home visit is not a formality.
The honest summary
For a family with a combined income under roughly £80,000, at a top-endowment school, a full or near-full award is possible. For a family at £100,000–£150,000, a partial award of 10–30 per cent is plausible at several London schools that would not have entertained the conversation before 2024. Above that, the conversation is about scholarships (non-means-tested, small, honorific) and about sibling arrangements, not bursaries.
Do not register at ten schools and apply for bursaries at all ten; the paperwork is onerous and registrars compare notes more than parents assume. Pick three, read their published criteria closely, and be ready to open the family's finances to an independent assessor. The scheme works as advertised; it just works quietly.
Sources: ISC Census 2025; Eton College Financial Aid and Bursaries Guidance; Good Schools Guide bursary coverage; Mumsnet Bursaries & Fees board (composite, public threads).