Monkton Combe School

Scholarships
We award scholarships in recognition of the unique contribution that those who combine passion and talent can make to school life. We want our scholars to raise aspirations, model perseverance, and demonstrate the power of embracing failure.

In turn, we offer scholars a pathway on one of our excellence programmes; these are designed to stretch our scholars beyond their current levels of performance with the aim of establishing that higher level as their norm. 

We don’t have a scholarship assessment week: we don’t want to impose our time scale on prospective pupils who might better demonstrate their passion and talent at another time. So, we will assess the suitability of candidates as part of a taster day or other visit to the school, as well as references from their current school. Some may not be ready yet to join an excellence programme, so we welcome applications throughout a pupil’s journey through the Senior School so that if they reach the required level at a different point in their school career, they can join whenever that happens to be.

There is an annual review which allows all parties to reflect on a pupil’s progress on the excellence programmes; as some join others may leave, reflecting the priorities of each individual at any one point in time. If priorities change again, a pupil may choose to re-apply at a later stage.

Scholarships and the associated excellence programmes are a great example of Monkton thinking differently; they uniquely celebrate passion and talent whilst avoiding the potentially corrosive effects of high stakes assessment, locked-in awards and fee reductions. 

Bursaries
There are a limited number of small endowment funds which provide bursaries to enable pupils who meet certain specified criteria to come to Monkton who would otherwise be unable to do so on financial grounds. A limited number of bursaries are also offered each year, out of School funds, with the level of assistance offered being means-tested and dependent on completion and assessment of a full confidential statement of financial circumstances. 

There is no fixed limit to the level of assistance provided in any single case, although financially there is a total limit to the amount of assistance that can be offered to pupils in any one year. Higher priority is given to children of clergy or missionaries, or where special circumstances give rise to a particularly deserving case. It is currently very unusual for bursaries to be granted to any day pupils.