A History of Bursaries

South Hampstead and the Girls’ Day School Trust have a long legacy of providing financial support to educate young women.

In the 1950s, South Hampstead became a ‘direct grant’ school; in the decades that followed, many of our pupils received a local council grant or, from the 1980s, an Assisted Place to cover the cost of school fees. The Assisted Places Scheme was abolished in the 1990s, initiating a significant change to the composition of our community – a change which we continue to redress through our bursary scheme.

Our archivist, Joanna Coates, looks back on how we supported fully-funded places in the 1950s:

‘Notes made in 1956 by the Headmistress, Ms Bodington, show many girls applying for London County Council scholarships for entrance to the school. South Hampstead was a direct grant school in those days with a large number of places funded by the local authority. The rest of the students joined on fee paying places. What is interesting is that notes were made on the father’s profession (not on the mother’s!), and also on what they were reading; Little Women was popular (as it still is) and quite a few of the girls were reading Dickens and Kipling. Others were reading CS Lewis and Mark Twain. One admitted to Enid Blyton.’

These days, we rely on the generosity of our community to fund our means-tested bursary places. South Hampstead’s Opening Doors campaign and the GDST’s Learning Without Limits programme are now helping us to fund 41 pupils at South Hampstead and more than 1,000 pupils across the GDST network of schools.

Find out more about our means-tested bursaries at South Hampstead for entry at 11+ (Year 7) and 16+ (Sixth Form) here.