One of Britain’s most academically distinguished schools has told parents they face an annual levy of about £1,400 as a result of new requirements on the charitable status of private education.

Parents of boys at Winchester college, Hampshire, are this weekend receiving a letter to tell them they will have to pay the levy to subsidise bursaries for poorer families.

The supplement will amount to 3% of fees this year, rising to 5% in 2010, likely to be about £1,400. Next year’s fees, including the levy, will rise more than 5% to £27,870, although this is lower than for some schools – Eton’s fees, for example, will rise 6% to £28,080.

Winchester, founded in 1382, is one of the first schools to detail the effects of the new government requirements and its moves will be watched closely by competitors. Sir Andrew Large, Winchester’s warden, and Ralph Townsend, its headmaster, wrote that the school had carried out a review “in the light of current changes in charity law and public benefit”.

They warned that schools can no longer accept “a continual narrowing of access without threatening their long-term future”. In addition to the levy, parents will be asked to contribute annually to the college’s £70m appeal, which will largely go to bursaries.

The measures are intended to enable the school to cover full fees for 67 pupils by 2018 and part of the costs for another 134. Parents were also told in the letter that, from 2011, no scholarship would come with an automatic fee cut but all would be means-tested.

Townsend said the levy was “not an enormous amount”, adding: “We believe parents will realise they are the beneficiaries of charitable donations in the past and so it is reasonable to ask them to give some money themselves.”

Other schools, including Cheltenham ladies’ college, Harrow and Rugby, said they would use fundraising rather than fees to expand bursaries.

Sir Peter Lampl, the education philanthropist, said cash should be targeted at poor families: “If they [the bursaries] go to existing students whose parents fall on hard times, or subsidise places for teachers’ children, the sector will remain largely closed to those from nonprivileged backgrounds.”

— St Paul’s school in London and Eton college in Berkshire are to boycott official league tables as they believe the way the government gives equal weighting to A-levels and vocational qualifications is “nonsensical”.

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