Sudden change to university grants excludes private school students, causing deep concern

Changes to the eligibility criteria for university grants caused alarm on Monday for many parents whose children are poised to sit A-level exams and now face being unable to access public funding because they attend a private school.

The changes had been flagged by Chief Minister Fabian Picardo in a New Year message in January in which he signalled plans to tighten eligibility criteria for “flagship benefits” including housing, healthcare and university education.

The aim is to ensure that such benefits, which are open to Gibraltar residents, are “fair and sustainable”.

But Mr Picardo offered few details at the time and when details of the scholarship changes came to light on Monday, it left parents and students reeling.

The news emerged after Paul Martyn, the headteacher at Prior Park Gibraltar, received an email from the Department of Education just after midday outlining significant changes to eligibility criteria.

According to that email, to qualify for the mandatory grant pupils must be currently attending Bayside, Westside or the Gibraltar College, or have previously attended a Government school for their A-level or Level 3 qualifications and taken no more than two gap years.

The changes come into effect as from September 2025, while the existing requirement of five years of residency in Gibraltar remains the same.

“I fully understand that this will come as an enormous shock and a cause for deep concern,” Mr Martyn said in a letter to parents, seen by the Chronicle.

“Please know that I share your disappointment, both in the decision itself and in the way it has been communicated, without prior consultation.”

“As a school where the vast majority of students are local, this change significantly and unfairly affects our community.”

Mr Martyn said he would be writing to the Gibraltar Government to “formally express our dismay and to seek further clarification”.

He told the Chronicle he hoped to work with the Government to mitigate the impact of the changes.

The email was received just hours before parents and pupils were set to attend a talk in Westside school on the Gibraltar Scholarship, to which parents of Prior Park students – in common with those of children in Government schools - had been invited in January.

Shortly after sending the email, the Department of Education contacted Prior Park and asked the school to inform parents that the meeting “was no longer relevant” and that they should instead attend a talk on the “discretionary scholarship route”.

Many parents chose to attend anyway and were briefed in a separate room, where they were informed their children could still apply for discretionary grants.

But as one parent later pointed out, some courses may be preferred over others when deciding on discretionary grants and there was no guarantee pupils would receive the awards.

Gerry Searle, a mother who chairs the Prior Park parents’ committee and whose daughter is sitting A-level exams in May, said the development had left parents and students “stressed out”.

There are 18 Prior Park students currently sitting mock exams and due to take their A-levels in May, all but two of them Gibraltarians.

She said there were many misconceptions about private schooling and that parents had varied reasons for choosing that option, as was their right as taxpaying members of the community.

For some parents that meant making huge financial sacrifices to be able to afford the fees. Other children were there simply on their own merit having won bursaries.

Most pupils about to sit their exams already had university places lined up that might now not materialise if the changes went through.

That could potentially leave parents facing a huge bill as the only alternative to ensure further education for their children. For some students whose parents do not have the means, it may mean missing out on university education.

Gibraltar students are charged home tuition fees in UK universities, normally around £10,000 a year.

But some parents were worried that even if they could afford to pick up the tab, their children might be classed as international students, whose tuition fees are much higher.

On Monday evening, the picture for parents and students at this critical time was unclear.

“It’s discrimination at all levels,” Ms Searle said.

“Where is the fairness? It’s really, really unjust.”

Andrea Hamilton, another parent whose son is sitting his A-levels in May, echoed those concerns.

“They’re starting their A-levels at the beginning of May and they’re actually in the middle of their mocks this week,” she said.

“So you can imagine that this is not the kind of distraction that the kids need at this point in their education.”

“They should be putting 100% of their efforts into getting their best grades, not stressing about how they’re going to finance university.”

“It just seems incredibly unfair.”

“We can all appreciate pressures on governments but it seems absolutely ridiculous to penalise 18 children.”

Ms Hamilton said the Government should have taken “a planned, phased approach” that enabled parents and students to plan accordingly.

“It’s about being able to make informed choices,” she said, adding: “I think it’s wholly unfair to drop this onto students that are just approaching their A-levels.”

“They’ve ripped the rug out from underneath them.”

The change to eligibility criteria will also impact pupils at the Gibraltar Boys Secondary School and the Gibraltar Girls High School, where students and parents were equally worried about the future.

“We weren’t expecting this,” a spokesperson for the schools told the Chronicle.

“It caught us totally by surprise and parents are very concerned.”

They too will be raising their concerns directly with the Gibraltar Government.

On Monday night, a spokesperson for No.6 Convent Place told the Chronicle that the Gibraltar Government was “working on a fair and sustainable method of qualification for residence-based benefits”.

This includes eligibility for university scholarships, although there was an indication that the final changes to the criteria were not yet set in stone.

“As a result, Government has not wanted to commit to automatic scholarship entitlement for certain classes of students outside of the Government's Secondary Schools,” the spokesperson said.

“Final considerations as to automatic eligibility will be announced shortly, as well as criteria for discretionary entitlement.”