LORETTO School will be allowed to retain its charitable status after meeting demands from regulators to widen access to the benefits it provides.

The Musselburgh independent school is one of dozens across Scotland that have been scrutinised by Scottish charity regulator OSCR over the last 12 months.

In October, the regulator ordered the school to remove what it described as “undue restrictions” which stopped some young people attending.

It criticised the amount of money families were able to access to help fund the cost of sending their children to the school, saying Loretto’s current practice was not providing a “public benefit” as required for a charity.

The regulators said then: “On balance, and having had regard to possible unduly restrictive conditions on accessing the benefit, we concluded that public benefit was not provided by Loretto School Ltd.

“This was due to the fees and charges that were in place, the insufficient mitigation of the impact of these fees through means-tested bursary support and the insufficient level of other benefit being provided in furtherance of its charitable purposes for which no fee or charge is made.” However, last week OSCR announced that Loretto could retain its charitable status after the school introduced changes – and OSCR confirmed it had now passed its “charity test”.

The school has increased its spend on fee reimbursments and awards, and pointed to the new Scottish Golf Centre it is developing, which will be used by the Scottish Golf Union to develop the sport in the country.

In a report, OSCR said a total of 107 Loretto pupils would receive means-tested awards from the school towards their fees, to the total value of £998,000.

Bursaries awarded by the school are of varying values. The bracket with the highest number of awards remains 21-40 per cent of the fee, but the report noted the number of students receiving this award had increased.

It also said seven pupils will receive a full award.

A spokesman for Loretto said: “We are pleased that the very great efforts to increase access to a Loretto education and develop our role at the heart of the community have been recognised.”