Ensuring that talented and academically gifted girls from all backgrounds have access to education at Notting Hill & Ealing High School is integral to the school’s vision and ethos. Our students, staff, current and former parents and alumnae represent all backgrounds and reflect the culture and community of our school. We know bursaries change lives and benefit the whole school community. At NHEHS, we have a long history of providing bursary awards and our bursary pupils have contributed hugely to the diversity and endeavour of the school.

However, each year we turn away many talented applicants, currently we have around 6% of our students on bursary awards but our ambition is to do much more.

In 2023/4 we will be celebrating our 150th anniversary, such an important milestone feels like the right time to extend our bursary programme to anyone with the ability and potential, regardless of background of wealth.

Over the summer we will be sharing some stories from our alumnae and their families showing what a difference a bursary can make. Here’s how NHEHS helped Sophie, Class of 2006:

‘We lived in Stamford Brook. My best friend had gone to NHEHS junior school and I was desperate to go too. The chance came at the end of my primary school. I didn’t start off needing a bursary but I remember money increasingly being a problem – my parents were separated and my mother an artist. We were looking at free schools to move me to but I loved being at NHEHS and was so desperate to stay. It was a really worrying time for me. I remember such a difference at home when I was awarded the bursary; it really took the weight off.  

I came by the phrase ‘safe space; brave space’ the other day – I don’t remember the context – but that is what NHEHS was for me. The NHEHS art teachers who taught me in the Art Studio were very supportive. There I found stability and safety as well as affirmation of my potential. They opened me up to the possibilities of what I could achieve. I would never have applied to Central Saint Martin’s without them being super encouraging; I applied fully expecting not to get in. 

While my mum was always supportive not having much money at home deflates your ambition; NHEHS taught me to believe in myself. You always knew the teachers cared: I still have pinned up the postcard Mrs Plowden wrote to me when I left wishing me the best. I am also still friends with Jackie who I was at school with. She is now an enormously successful auctioneer. I am inspired by her and have huge respect for all that she’s achieved in the NYC art world. I think NHEHS just taught us to believe in ourselves. 

After leaving St Martin’s I set up a business with my brother, Ralli Design, with me doing the ceramics. We were selected to join other budding designers in a collaboration with Royal Stafford Pottery to form the English Eccentrix. My fine artwork is figurative in nature and has a lot of movement in it – I have thought over the years of how the mural in the gym at NHEHS has stuck in my mind and may have informed or inspired my artistic focus in a small way. Now I am doing work in experiential creative design for major brands, chiefly with ideation. This is a new area for me so exciting and allows me to buy a flat as well as continue with my Fine Art and exploration of NFTs. NHEHS nourished me and embedded in me the confidence to adapt.’

Sophie Ralli, Class of 2006

If you would like to learn more about our Bursaries & Assistance Fund, read more on the GDST website. If you wish to donate, please click here. Thank you.