A family is in a race against time to raise money for their 12-year-old daughter to stay at an elite dance school in Britain.

Vidya Cannonier-Watson’s parents have been unable find a sponsor to cover tuition fees for their daughter’s second year abroad.

Now, the family hope to raise $45,000 by the end of next week before Vidya goes back the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts.

Michael Watson, Vidya’s father, said: “You see these dancers in films and stuff but this is where it has to start.

“So it’s not just about paying for her education, but asking how do we support talent at its grass roots?”

Mr Watson, from Devonshire, said that the family was able to enrol Vidya in the specialised boarding school after a fundraising campaign last year.

He added: “We got a little bit from a GoFundMe before and then we had a main sponsor who came to our aid, which was incredibly generous.”

But Mr Watson added: “Unfortunately, we were informed that the sponsorship wasn’t going to be in place this year only about three weeks ago.

“I hate to use the word desperate because that’s not what we are, but we have a deadline and we’re trying to raise as much as we can during that timeframe.”

The family explained that they had continued to use a GoFundMe to raise money for Vidya and so far had collected $1,500. They added that they planned to hold other fundraisers throughout the year to stay on top of school bills.

But Mr Watson explained that their 14-year-old son, Ravi, also attended boarding school and the family had to support him, although he got some help from a scholarship. He said that Vidya had tried to apply for scholarships but was too young to qualify.

Mr Watson added: “There’s so little funding for the arts and we don’t really have much access to scholarships here for the arts.

“If she was 17 years old and going off to law school, there’d be hundreds of thousands of dollars available, but for 12-year-old ballerinas, there’s not much.”

Vidya has been a dancer for ten years after she was inspired by her mother, Sophia Cannonier, who also trained as a dancer.

She explained that she had performed in several theatres in the UK and had danced with the English National Ballet, one of the country’s four top companies.

Vidya added: “There’s the idea of ‘oh, you’re a ballerina, you wear pink shoes and a big tutu’, but to me it’s a lifestyle.

“You have to live it, you have to continue to condition yourself, eat the right things to keep your body healthy and help continue your career.”

Vidya said that she planned to practise as hard as she could while away irrespective of how much money she received.

She said: “I don’t want to think that I don’t have to work hard because I have all the money I need to stay at the school.

“I’ll have to work hard because I know it could be taken away from me if I don’t.”