Assisted Places Scheme

The Assisted Places Scheme was established in the UK by the Conservative government in 1980. Children who could not afford to go to fee-paying independent schools were provided with free or subsidised places - if they were able to score within the top 10-15% of applicants in the school's entrance examination. By 1985, the scheme catered for some 6,000 students per year. The scheme, to a degree, replicatated the effect of the Direct grant grammar schools which had operated between 1945 and 1976. Between 1981 and 1997 an estimated 80,000 children participated in the scheme, costing a total of just over £800 million. In 1981, 4,185 pupils gained assisted places. By 1997 there were some 34,000 pupils and 355 schools in this scheme.

Claiming the practice to be elitist and wasteful of public funds, the Labour government of Tony Blair, upon its election in 1997, abolished the Assisted Places Scheme. The government announced that the funds were instead to be used to reduce class sizes in state nursery schools. However, children already in receipt of an assisted place were allowed to complete the remainder of that phase of their education.

The result of abolition has been to reduce the social range of pupils educated at independent schools. Some independent schools have taken steps to provide their own funding for pupils from poorer backgrounds through bursaries.

A successor to the Assisted Places Scheme, known as the Open Access Scheme, has been established and financed by the Girls' Day School Trust in partnership with the Sutton Trust.

External links

• Assisted places information on TeacherNet