The Assisted Places Scheme is dead: long live assisted places, at least in the 25 schools run by the Girls’ Day School Trust. Applications are now being invited from parents of bright girls aged 10 and over for the first 400 of the Trust’s own scholarships. The first Trust scholars will start their secondary schooling in September 1998, after the Government-funded Assisted Places Scheme stops.
The Trust, which has removed “public” from its title to give the schools a less exclusive image, has embarked on a massive exercise to raise the Pounds 70million needed to replace all 3,000 assisted places. It has already found more than Pounds 12m, mostly from existing investments.
