Headteacher Rebecca Coker-Adeleke Photo: Catalina May

Three students in a sixth form in Tower Hamlets will receive a scholarship to help them go to university outside London every year.

This bursary of £3,000 per year will help relieve the massive debts that pupils at Cambridge Heath Sixth Form will have to face after the rise of tuition fees, approved last week.

Rebecca Coker-Adeleke, Director at Cambridge Heath said: “This comes at a very good time. Some of our students are incredibly concerned with the idea that they will have a huge burden of loan when they leave.

“Our students tend to go to university in the locality, however there are excellent universities outside of London.”

The grant is awarded by Lloyd’s community programme and is designed to encourage students coming from deprived backgrounds to apply to universities outside London. Each year, 20 percent of Tower Hamlet students choose to go to university after sixth form,  over 500 stay in London, living with their families to minimise costs.

Mike Tyler, Tower Hamlets Education Business Partnership, said: “The Lloyd’s bursary programme will give students the important option of considering universities outside London, widening choice and helping them develop the social and life skills gained from leading independent lives away from home.”

Lloyd’s have developed a measuring scheme to select successful applicants, with those chosen able to access their bursary at the beginning of their University life

Tower Hamlets students are not only facing a rise in tuition fees. They will also be seriously affected by the abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA). 67 percent of 16-18 year-olds in education in the borough currently receive the £10-30 weekly EMA grant that the government will scrap next September as part of the wider cuts in education.