Share:
GSA schools are independent, fee-charging schools. Many provide means-tested bursaries for families of limited financial means. They range from partial to 100% free places depending on the individual school and its eligibility criteria.
Some bursaries are funded by schools, many of which have ongoing bursary fundraising campaigns. Others are funded from external bodies and charities. You can find details on each school’s individual page on this website as well as on their own website and the ISC website.
Bursaries can be life-changing and, together with the wide range of ongoing partnerships that exist between GSA and state schools, can play a significant role in social mobility.
Case studies
Fairooz Islam
Manchester High School for Girls
Fairooz Islam went to Manchester High School for Girls on a full bursary funded as a result of the school’s Pankhurst Bursary Appeal. Her fellow students there voted her the student ‘most likely to achieve world domination’.
She comes from Longsight in inner-city Manchester, an area with high levels of poverty, deprivation and crime. In 2015, she passed her A levels in maths, further maths, biology, chemistry and physics, and the leading UK cloud computing firm UKFast – founded by entrepreneur Lawrence Jones – was so impressed that they found an extra place for her on their already full work experience programme.
Passionate about what she called ‘futuristic areas of work’ – artificial intelligence, robotics and biological modelling – Fairooz went on to study computer science at King’s College, Cambridge. After working as Technical Delivery Manager for OpenMarket, where she helped enterprises use mobile solutions to transform their business, she is now Product Operations Analyst with 10x Future Technologies.
She has also been involved in a diversity initiative that inspires primary school children about computing and coding.
Fairooz said:
I received a bursary as there was no way my family could have afforded the school fees. The school, and the belief the teaching staff had in me, gave me the confidence to aim high and really fulfil my dreams.
Fairooz’s parents, Mrs Laila Arjumannessa and Mr Mohammed Islam, a pharmacy technician, said:
Due to our low income we thought that it would be impossible to find a school that would be able to support [our daughter] properly. The bursary the school gave her has changed her life altogether.
