City of London Girls full and withdrawing offers - anyone heard similar and advice?

I think you illustrate the point well Mary21. CLSG is definitely looking East. With East London transformed and so many families living in East London now, it makes good sense. Why be a back up for SPSG, when you can be the undisputed, premier school in your catchment area?

When you sign the acceptance for any school, it asks if you owe money to another. Of course you could lie, but there is communication between schools.

The thing is, that this criteria is made very clear. If you don't like it, you shouldn't sign the acceptance which is a binding contract. The issue isn't whether you think it is right or fair.

I think a terms fees is reasonable. Acceptance forms refer to a 'genuine estimate' of potential out of someone pulling out as being 1-5 years of lost fees. They cannot and will it say you will owe a terms fees if they don't get someone else to fill the place. It would be impossible to identify which newcomer filled whose place and would lead to wrangling. A blanket rule is required for everyone - and the terms worth of fees is it. This is why no one wants to sign the acceptance for City before they know of all their options. And without this term, those parents who already hold onto 5 or 6 offers until the deadline, will probably accept more than one and later drop out or keep changing their mind. At some point, parents have to commit and cough up and accept there will be a financial penalty for pulling out. The acceptance deadline seems to redo able point for people to have to do that.

When you look at the number of Bute house pupils and Pembridge hall girls who are offered clog and the number who accept you can see why the school is looking east
www.butehouse.co.uk/moving-on/senior-school-places.html
www.pembridgehall.co.uk/Our-School/Senior-School-Transition/

Do oversubscribed schools successfully take parents to court to "recover" the money?
I wish a UK solicitor was here to tell us. Where is Xena when you need her!

A term's fees for a change of mind by parents is very widespread practice and has been so for years - unlike the withdrawal of an offer before the deadline for acceptance.

I don't think schools are going to feel any moral pressure to treat families more generously any time soon. For as long as there are far more good candidates than places, schools have the upper hand. Here in Paris some of the schools have shocking practices at 11+ but that doesn't stop families wanting to get their children in to what are perceived to be the best schools.

Whether it does or does not actually remain open does matter. If they can immediately refill that place, then they have no material loss and therefore no right to claim a penalty. A real loss has to be suffered through breach of contract.

In the T and C we were sent, it said something like the real costs to a school of a pupil rescinding their acceptance after parents have made their decisions is realistically between 1 and 5 years worth of fees. However, they limit the parents liability to 1 term of fees. (this was put in a tone of them doing parents a favour as really you could be costing the school 5 years of fees) Can't remember exact wording, but I read it all through yesterday.

I do understand why they do this. Teachers have to give notice by Easter so the key recruiting period is now. If they take on new staff based on expected numbers, they will have to pay them for at least a year. In a worst case scenario they might not get another pupil to fill the gap,especially in people pull pull out late.....and I guess that place could remain empty for the entire schooling period of 5 or 7 years. Whether it does or doesn't isn't relevant - the risk of it happening is real, hence the term of fees as a deterrent.
I don't have a problem with schools saying this, after people have firmly accepted a place. I would have a problem if they insisted on people accepting, paying the deposit and being committed to a term of fees before they had received all of their offers, including state. And this is what the exploding offer does - it forces the decision and acceptance and deposit payment before people have all the info. Yes, I know that a term of fees is small fry in relation to 7 years of fees and people should t be holding places for schools they definitely cannot afford anyway, but for many it is a very marginal decision - they could pay at great sacrifice and will do so IF they don't get their state choice. For those people to lose £6k (or more) because they were forced to accept before they had all the info about their state option, is still a lot of money and seems unreasonable to me.

Even without a cooling off period, I am surprised that schools could demand a full terms fees. Surely there is a duty to mitigate, which is easily done by oversubscribed schools.

I don't know about Citys terms. The school we have a place for has a 14 day cooling off period which isn't related to distance selling. It just says you can pull out for any reason and without saying why in the first 14 days.

After that, if you pull out and give more than a terms notice (so until Easter I guess) you forfeit the full deposit. If you give less than a terms notice to not accept you lose a terms fees minus the deposit.

I guess each school might be a bit different. The one we have our offer from seems to accept that some people will always choose state over them and that some will choose another independent. However, I think they are confident that they will be first choice for the majority of applicants. That's the impression I get from the process and speaking to parents who've done it before.

chocolate my understanding is that you cannot pull Out under the 14 day cooling period if you (the parents) have visited the school at any point during the application process. So if you attended an interview that would mean the 13 day cooling period doesn't apply. If you have toured the school during the application process that will also invalidate the 14 day cooling period.
I suppose the decision if you can't meet the criteria for the 13 day cooling period is to accept that you will have to lose the deposit and first terms fees if you decide to accept a state school place after accepting the independent school place. For a lot of parents who would be paying full fees they will still go with losing the terms fees because the state school option will save them £££ over the course of 7 years.

No, to schools using the usual process of wait lists. I've been following a number of the school threads through from the start when people are preparing g for exams, to offers and acceptance - just from an interest angle, to see how people get on. I like seeing how things seems to work out in the end and most people seem to get somewhere they are happy with eventually, even if they have to wait for the wait list point.
I hadn't heard of Citys exploding offers before this year. Initially I felt outraged as a parent and on behalf of those who have lost offers. However, I also find the whole topic of parents holiday lots of offers and how schools can manage that very interesting.
At the end of the day, schools do need to act to maximise their own position and to fill with the best candidates, whilst also retaining parental goodwill. I'm interested to see how all of this develops in the current climate of people applying to lots of schools.
Fortunately by own DS has an offer to our top choice school. However we haven't accepted yet because I want to see what state school offers day gives us. If the independent school we like had exploded their offer I would have been gutted, but having said that,mid I had known there was a risk of it, I would have accepted the offer, with a plan to pull out under the 14 day cooling off period, if the state offer came through. I know this would return the independent to the same position of having to go to its wait list, but think I must be given the chance to have full info.However, as a parent I feel I absolutely must be given the chance to see the state school offer before making a final decision. I will be able to do that within perhaps a day or 2 of the state offer.

Did your DD apply to CLSG this year Chocolate?

Central London is a crowded, expensive place. Finding suitable extra rooms, even offsite would be challenging. Yes, CLSG is owned by the corporation of London, but what do you expect? That they should just commandeer a few meeting rooms in the Guild Hall for the next 7 years?

I agree this new admissions system isn't working for them. They have run it this way for the last 3 years and have now come unstuck. If it were my choice, I'd have them run a computer pre-test like St. Paul's does to winnow down the numbers.

All schools have issues to deal with regarding admissions. Some face difficulties because they are in an area with lots of schools with a similar profile, making it tricky to predict acceptances, some find they are low down the pecking order so have to vastly over offer to fill up, but do t know exactly how much to over offer by, others are constrained more by space than others, some are affected more by state school offers than others, some find in an individual year that external effects work to make more or less people accept than normal.
City is no different to other schools in facing constraints. All schools do and part of their job is to successfully manage those constraints so that they fill the school with the best pupils they can and avoid having too many acceptances. Schools know it's not an exact science. Most manage this by certain amount of over offering (more for less popular schools needed) and then using a wait list. If they expect to go to wait list, then those at the top are probably almost as desired as those at the bottom of the firm offers list. These schools keep in close contact with the top of their wait list, encouraging them that a place is fairly likely, so that the chances of acceptance if a place becomes available is higher. By keeping in close contact, the school can also gauge from wait list people if they have other offers in hand and how much they want to come and how likely they are to accept - so the school does have some control by using wait lists because they can gather information which really helps them, plus never have to offer to the wait list if they do t need to. Most schools successfully operate a wait list like this.
Given City's space constraints, I would think they need to be very careful about over offering and to actively manage a decent length wait list. As each 'no' is received, they can immediately offer to a wait list person, perhaps prioritising those who have said they are very likely to accept or will accept immediately. Other highly popular and over subscribed schools who fear a bulge class manage to do this, so I think City could too. They absolutely can avoid the bulge class by making extremely few over offers, by making clear they would like early acceptance, by enquiring as to likelihood of acceptance post offer and running very well managed wait list. This is a way to effectively manage it, which would seem fair to parents.

However, I can see that seeming fair to parents isn't City's key concern. They are confident enough in their application numbers to feel they can disregard this. The numbers they over offer to are all good candidates and rather than just offer the exact amount of places or a few extra too to the very top candidates and then face the possibility of not filling and having to possibly go well down the wait list to find people who haven't gone elsewhere, they prefer to have certainty of filling from that larger pool of over offers, all of whom they consider good enough to take, even if they can't be sure the very top ones will be the ones who accept fast enough to get a place. It is logical from their point of view, if they have decided they simply don't need to worry about upsetting parents because they will still fill anyway. It is a selfish approach and doesn't fit with what most schools do, but I can see how it is I. Their own self interest and they will justify it like that and in the context of parents holding loads of offers, which in the last will have forced them to go well down the waiting list to candidates they didn't really want, or to deal with a bulge class due to over offers.

Perhaps more of the very popular and heavily oversubscribed by parents who will get 4 or 5 offers and sit on them, type schools will feel forced to do this.

Not sure what the answer is because parental panic isn't going to be reduced, people will keep applying to lots of schools and so schools cannot be sure how many they have offered to will say yes, and come deadlines day, that can put them in a vulnerable position.

"Dispersed buildings" is a difficult and expensive problem. Managing a school with disperse buildings can't be improvised and creates costs and constraints and security issues that eat away at management resources.

It's not just finding a classroom though, at secondary it's space in labs, moving round for specialist teaching etc. Now some schools do that round dispersed buildings anyhow (eg Westminster) but it would be quite a major change in a school to move from single-site to dispersed.

So I can see why they just can't.

But that does not mean that I think that rescinding offers in this way is a good thing.

With hindsight, it's always easy to make the most most appropriate and timely decision.
We, like NL2016, had two independent schools, among our 4 offers we very much liked more than the other 2, once in the lucky position to be able to pick. We saw the offer holder mornings as an important part of the decision process and replied straightaway to reserve our place there. Had this happened last year, would have we behaved differently? Possibly.
I would like to think not many people hold on to offers for the sake of it, but then again may be wrong.
Now due to what happened, we are still holding on to two offers till national offer day. We would have already released at least another one had this not happened.
As for the comments regarding all the advice you get from your prep headmaster, or admission tutors etc. Well not everybody come from that background

Even with a can't , there are other ways to manage numbers than by not honouring offers.

I've been told it is a can't not a won't. Their spare capacity has been taken up by an earlier bulge year and until that year graduates through, there is no slack in the system.

-The building is Grade 1 (not two, one) so they cannot move walls around.

-There are rules about how much square meterage there has to be per child in a classroom.
-City owns no outdoor space, so temporary portable classrooms are impossible.

People have mentioned bulge classes upthread as if they are an unusual occurrence and a result of recent increased numbers - but actually I think they happen quite often. DD's school year had 5 forms rather than 4 when she started in 2007. My ds's year at LU was 7 forms of 24 so 168 a couple of years later. My other ds's school said in his admission round that they were being particularly careful that year because the year above had an extra class. So I'm pretty sure it happens quite regularly in most schools and has done for many years, it's not a new phenomenon, but one that most schools take into their stride. City obviously can't or won't.

The numbers sitting exams are indeed huge, but schools do not have to resort to rescinding offers to cope with that.

Some do indeed run vast exams (Alleyns actually shut the school that day except for the year group that acts as stewards), others (eg SPGS) use a computer-based test as an initial sift and then invite only the top however-many to a written exam. And others simply guillotine the registration list at a certain number (eg Emanuel)

Not honouring offers does not seem to be a particularly good way of controlling numbers registering for entry.

"Imagine organising 1300 student exams to get 150 students."

True - which is one of the advantages to schools of the consortium I suppose. Though does each school in the consortium still mark them separately? - yes, that must be a huge effort even if you don't physically have to have 1300 students on the premises on one morning.

I can see why dparents apply to so many schools though - if student numbers are increasing (which I think they are in that age range) and the number of private school places is stable, it is becoming harder to get a place in any private school. So dparents aiming for private feel they have to apply to more schools to be certain. Particularly if they haven't got prep school advice on where their dc should target.