Bursaries awarded

Dear South Wiltshire Grammar School for Girls (SWGS), Salisbury,

Please identify how many bursaries were awarded to SWGS students in each academic year from Sept 2015 to today. Please provide the information naming each of the different bursaries awarded.

Yours faithfully,

Miss B White

Dear SWGS Head Account,

Thank you for your question so that I can clarify my question.

I am interested in:

The 16 to 19 Bursary Fund which provides financial support to help students overcome specific barriers to participation so they can remain in education.

I am interested in both of the 2 types of 16 to 19 bursaries:

bursaries for defined vulnerable groups, and

discretionary bursaries which institutions award using policies they set.

Yours sincerely,

Miss B White

Dear M Chilcott,

Thank you

Yours sincerely,

Miss B White

Dear M Chilcott,

Thank you for your reply.

Please can you (1) clarify one point for me and (2) complete an internal review and provide the information to answer a second point which I believe you can answer.

1. Clarification

I am a bit confused by the punctuation in your response to your definition of a high needs pupil.
Please can you confirm: Does this mean?

Any student 16-25 that
• BOTH HAS an EHCP in place
• AND requires support costing over £6k where funding for that support comes from the local authority.

2. Unanswered question

From my final question in your letter, I believe that the following question is answerable by your school:
“Please provide information from where you have sought advice and guidance from 2018-2020 which advise on the subject of accessing funding for education/ alternative provision/ other academic support where the young person has not been deemed well enough to attend education with you for >15 days and they have already commenced a course of education (i.e. when they have already commenced their GCSE/ A level course).
Please make it clear who you asked for advice or guidance from (name of organisation and department)”

Yours sincerely,

Miss B White

Dear Mrs Chilcott,

My requests are not vexatious or duplicating. I am confused by your assertion. Below are listed the 8 titles of my FOI requests which clearly demonstrates that they are of different subjects, with the exception of the 8th which I created to assist not vex you. Other public bodies have asked me to issue a separate question so they could have additional time to answer a question fully.

1. Celebrations and awards for achievement for Year 11 students and SEND students (10/3/2020)
2. Compliance with 2010 Equality Act as a long term, ongoing objective in 2019. (26/3/2020)
3. Disproportionate pressure on certain vulnerable groups of students to achieve (10/4/2020)
4. Bursaries awarded. (17/8/2020)
5. Equality impact assessments for this school's policies (19/9/2020)
6. Advice sought about accessing education for ill pupils (23/9/2020)
7. Use of high needs budget for sixth formers (19/9/2020)
8. Sources of alternative provision (15/10/2020). The sole reason for asking this as a separate question was that I had asked the question too tightly in my previous question and I just wanted to know from where the alternative provision had been provided - I thought I would need to ask the question separately so you could answer it as it was slightly different.

In response to the points you make:
• I am not required by the FOI Act to give you a reason for my enquiry. The presumption is in favour of disclosure.
• I certainly do not wish for you to identify any pupil, or for anyone reading your response to be able to identify any pupil under any circumstances. I wish you to protect the pupils please.

Finally,
please can you complete an internal review and let me know if you will be providing the information you hold in answer to the question of sources of alternative provision (question 8 above) and the question of equality impact statements for the past not the future (question 5 above). I appreciate that providing the information is time-consuming but please do not count the time of providing information that was not required by the question in the case of the Equality Impact Assessment question.

Yours sincerely,

Miss B White