Scottish Government funding to independent schools: FOI release

Information requested

1. The number of full and partial bursary supported places made available by each mainstream school in the Scottish independent schools sector in each of the last 10 years
2. The total value of the bursary support made available by each mainstream school in the Scottish independent schools sector in each of the last 10 years
3. The total overall value of the bursary support made available by all mainstream schools in the Scottish independent schools sector in each of the last 10 years

Response

Bursaries for independent schools are a matter for the proprietors of each institution. The Scottish Government does not collect this information.

However, with regards to Scottish Government funding to independent schools, you may be interested to see the response to an FOI published in February 2026 which can be found at Scottish Government spend on private schools: FOI release - gov.scot.

To reflect your requested timescale, the table below provides information on the number of supported places available in each of the 10 years and funding provided to St Mary’s Music School for the Aided Places Scheme from 2016-17 to 2019-20. This, together with the additional information set out in the above FoI, represents all funding from Scottish Government to independent schools that was identified in our searches.

Year	Funding	Number of supported places
2016-17	£1,273,622	Up to 51
2017-18	£1,302,598	Up to 51
2018-19	£1,293,267	Up to 51
2019-20	£1,376,903	Up to 55
2020-21	£1,391,412	Up to 55
2021-22	£1,260,399	Up to 55
2022-23	£1,466,075	Up to 55
2023-24	£1,540,561	Up to 55
2024-25	£1,793,115	Up to 51
2025-26	£2,199,024	Up to 51
Total overall value of support to SMMS	£14,896,976

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.