MUM-of-two Lorraine Horne vowed to do ANYTHING to get her daughter, Ella, into private school – even if it meant living on beans on toast just to afford it.
But she would need a miracle to pay the £50k a year fees for Christ’s Hospital school in Horsham. Luckily, her dreams came true – Lorraine doesn’t pay a PENNY towards Ella’s fees after she was awarded a bursary, and you could get one too with our guide.
The Sainsbury’s worker knew young Ella was gifted and did not want to let her talents go to waste Credit: Supplied
The posh private school costs £50,000 a year, making it hard for single mum Lorraine to afford. Credit: Toby Phillips
It’s easy to think why private school is only for the rich – it costs an average of £19,000 a year to send your child to a private day school, according to the education bible, the Good Schools Guide.
That means getting your child through primary and secondary school would cost you a gigantic £266,000.
But help is on hand. Many schools help lower fees by offering bursaries and scholarships.
A full bursary – which is what Ella was awarded – is usually considered the golden ticket because it covers all your tuition fees, and usually extras on top like meals, trips and uniforms.
“There’s no way we could have afforded it. Can anyone unless they’re born into money? It’s incredible.”
‘I thought private school was impossible’
Lorraine knew Ella was special from a very young age. When she joined school, she was clearly academically gifted.
“Since she was young, she’s been around four years ahead with her reading and is never happier than when she’s curled up with a book,” she says.
But Lorraine knew it would be impossible affording the fees for private school, Christ’s Hospital.
It costs up to £16,480 per term to send your child there for boarding, adding up to more than £49,000 for just a year.
But in 2022, when Ella was in year 5, Lorraine discovered from Ella’s teacher, Mrs Meyer, from Arundel Church of England Primary School, that the private school offers help to low income families.
Lorraine now works nightshifts in Sainsbury’s, but at this point, she worked as a chef at a local cafe earning £800 a month.
Even with Universal Credit and child benefit payments, her £1,200 income was still nowhere near enough to cover the huge bill.
“I thought it was impossible but her teacher and headteacher told me there were bursaries available that are based on a child’s achievements rather than where you are from and how much money you have,” she says.
Christ’s Hospital gives out more bursaries than any other school in the country.
Bursary or Scholarship – what’s the difference?
Scholarship:Awarded for talent or achievement – academic, sport, music or art.• Partial: Usually 5–10% off the fees, sometimes up to 25%. Covers tuition only.• Full: Rare. May cover full fees, but extras like meals, trips and uniforms are usually not included.
Bursary:Means tested, based on family income. The bigger the financial need, the bigger the award.• Partial: Covers a percentage of school fees, parents still pay the rest. Extras are usually extra.• Full: The golden ticket. Can cover all tuition plus extras such as meals, trips, uniforms, even spending money on overseas visits.
If the child passes the exams and the parents get through rigorous financial tests, looking at their income and savings, there could be hundreds of thousands of pounds of help available.
Four in five children at the school get some kind of financial support.
So Lorraine decided to go through the time consuming process of applying for a bursary.
Getting help for private school fees isn’t easy. It requires a lot of work – but if you’re successful, the pay off could be huge.
Now is the perfect time to start planning, because applications for bursaries from many private schools for the 2027 academic year are now open.
Deadlines usually close around mid-October to November – Christ’s Hospital is September 18 -so it’s worth getting started now, as there’s a LOT to get through.
Parents must send in paperwork showing their financial situation, like bank statements and housing costs.
What a full bursary can include
All tuition fees covered – no charges for lessons or exams
Uniform – including shoes, sports kit and even the school’s distinctive extras (like hats or blazers)
Meals – free school lunches, and sometimes breakfast or after school snacks
Books and learning materials – everything from textbooks to art supplies
Trips – day trips, residentials and in some cases overseas visits
Spending money – some schools even provide pocket money for foreign trips
After school care – wraparound support at no extra costs
Specialist support – SEN services, music lessons or sports coaching if needed
Specialist dance, music, drama classes – various specialist facilities
Specialist sports -often included
Day Attendance or Boarding School – some schools offer boarding facilities others just day attendance
Schools may ask about the kind of house you live in, the car you drive, evidence of any savings, the size of your mortgage, and where you go on holiday.
“Mrs Meyer made some phone calls to Christ’s Hospital to find out about the process and funding and relayed it all to me,” Lorraine says.
“They sent me forms which I had to fill in with all the details about our finances and circumstances, with every single bank account, benefit, rent and tax.”
Ella also had to take tough exams so the school could assess her abilities.
Lorraine lives with her dad David. He is a painter and decorator but has had cancer and heart problems and struggled to work in recent years.
“We had to send my dad’s details too as it’s based on the whole household’s income, even though Ella’s my responsibility,” Lorraine says.
The pressure mounted on Lorraine to get Ella into Christ’s Hospital after she went to a taster day at the school.
“When Ella came home she was buzzing saying “I’d love to go there. It’s like Hogwarts.”
Top five private schools for your children
Top 5 Private Girls’ Schools
St Paul’s Girls’ School – London — Fees up to £37,242 a year for day pupils.
North London Collegiate School – London — Fees up to £29,751 a year.
Guildford High School for Girls – Surrey — Fees up to £26,769 a year.
Wycombe Abbey School – Buckinghamshire — Fees up to £61,500 a year for boarders, £46,800 for day pupils.
The Godolphin and Latymer School – London — Fees up to £35,094 a year.
Top 5 Private Boys’ Schools
St Paul’s School – London — Fees up to £53,943 a year for boarding in the Senior School, otherwise £35,847 for day pupils
Eton College – Berkshire — Fees up to £63,298 a year for boarders, there is no day school
Winchester College – Hampshire — Fees up to £62,100 a year for boarding, £45,954 for day pupils
Tonbridge School – Kent — Fees up to £64,251 a year for boarding, £46,578 for day fees
Abingdon School – Oxfordshire — Fees up to £58,125 a year for boarding, £28,500 for day pupils.
NOTE: Abingdon School and Winchester College have signalled that they are moving towards co-education, which means that they could soon accept girls as well.
More than six months after Lorraine first started the application process, a letter finally arrived with a smart crest stamped on the envelope telling her that Ella had got a place at the school after passing all three exams.
Lorraine remembers: “Ella was jumping for joy. She was jumping up and down saying “Mum, I did it.
“I was over the moon too – getting in was a huge achievement.”
But there was a problem. Ella was awarded a bursary that would cover 93 per cent of the fees in her first year. That meant Lorraine and her dad still had to find £4,200 between them to cover fees.
“It was a huge amount of money. If it had been much more it would have been impossible.
“I chose to pay it in ten monthly installments. We scrimped and saved, changing how we shopped and living on basics.
“Dad and I agreed we’d live on beans on toast to give Ella the chance to go to the school. You want to give your children the world.”
The family’s finances are reviewed every July and last summer. After Lorraine left her chef job, they decided to increase Ella’s bursary to 100 per cent.
This was because Lorraine had a new baby, Teddy, in July last year, and was living on benefits.
That means Ella’s second year school fees have been entirely wiped – so Lorraine hasn’t paid a penny in fees this year.
However, next year Lorraine will have to pay £2,000 towards paying the fees, even though her income has mainly been through Universal Credit.
But she’s determined to save as much as she can to afford the bill.
Luckily, Lorraine has just started a job at Sainsbury’s, working 4am to 8am four days a week – which will help her raise the cash needed.
Ella, now she’s just finished her second year is loving the school her family jokingly calls “Hogwarts”.
Lorraine says: “She’s doing amazingly and when she comes home, usually for a weekend every three weeks, I can see how happy she is.
“They aren’t allowed smart phones until year nine, so I don’t speak to her much, but that’s harder for me than it is for her.
“She is learning new things, like Latin, which she came top in her class for last year, and she already has her sights set on going to Cambridge University.
“She’s doing double bass lessons and has joined the Greek mythology club.
“I was worried about her fitting in, mostly because she is quite a reserved person. She will happily sit for hours with her nose in a book, but she also seems to have made loads of friends.”
How YOU can get a bursary or scholarship
Your first step is to start looking around private schools.
Keep in mind that bigger schools tend to have more money to spend on bursaries. Smaller schools may only be able to offer 20% or even less off fees.
Your best bet is to draw a line-up of schools which match your child’s talents for the best chance of getting help with fees.
So if your child is a musical maestro or a football prodigy, research which schools award bursaries to these sorts of pupils and target them.
The trick to getting help is to be prepared. Get all your paperwork sorted well in advance of the bursary and scholarship deadlines.
Lorraine says the hard-work is worth it – she’s so grateful she was awarded the help she needed.
“The school is amazing. When her dad and I went to an open day we got blisters because it’s so big. It’s got its own chapel, laundry room and doctor’s surgery,” she says.
“It’s a massive change for us as a family and it would be unthinkable without a bursary – there wouldn’t be a hope in hell.”
Ella is now studying swanky subjects such as Latin and has set her sights on going to Cambridge. Credit: Supplied
We share how you can get your kids into top private school like Ella Credit: Supplied
