City of London Girls withdrawing offers

Pradaqueen, how do you know City made less offers than last year?

Sorry if I've missed this fact but haven't seen it in any of my information from City but granted the emails have been few and far between.

We will be taking formal action as well once all is said and done.

Actually, I can add (paraphrasing of course) that, interestingly, yesterday's email, which told me that DD is 88th on the waiting list also noted that WL position is determined by how well they did in the exam and in the interview. So this is a different tack from last week when places were allocated by how fast parents could get a bank transfer and set of documents over to the school. And is also rather different in tone from the offer message which said (no small print on this one so I am liberty to quote directly she "performed to a very high standard in both her entry exam and interview and has done extremely well to gain a place from such a strong field of applicants".

Its interesting to see those waiting list numbers...I thought originally City had accidentally sent out offers to everyone who passed the test...not to everyone who they were going to make an offer too hence the very quick response to filling the places...but who knows - they would hardly admit this !

Drag and TheInvisible: thank you for sharing your story, and your amazing girls were brave! Shame on the school!
Now the numbers made me think that the accepted 75 might not be top scored candidates at all and the top ones were actually missed.
We met our friends tonight who sent their daughter to the school and she finished last year(studying medicine at one of the country top University now). I told them about the admission story and they were shell-shocked.

@Pradaqueen - I think you've hit the nail on the head. something has gone badly wrong. I was about to paste in the text from their email but (now that I've discovered the importance of their small print) realise that their emails must not be disseminated so you'll need to take my word for it.

I will be writing to their governors and to the HMC and ISA, in due course.

But if they are expecting large numbers to rescind, how is that better than running a conventional waiting list (other than causing much unnecessary disappointment).

Dragthing/invisible - Something seems very much adrift with the numbers. We know city made less offers than last year. A similar thread last year revealed anywhere between 100-115 offers were made. We know there are roughly 75 spaces assuming all of year 6 move up. So I am not sure how anyone's DD is 88th on the WL unless something has gone very badly wrong this year - or the school is expecting a large number of depositors to recind?

Dragthing. My DD is a stoic by nature, but I can't believe they can ignore them in this way. Like you, we haven't had a single personal response to any of quite a few emails. Unfortunately DD sent her own message from her own account, so it is pretty obvious she is being ignored. We've stayed on the list but right now I think she needs to concentrate on excitement for her alternative.

Post edited by MNHQ

@TheInvisibleHand - My DD too wrote to the school - in our case I copy-pasted her words into my first email on Tuesday 13th when our offer exploded. It ended:
"I cannot believe this. I hope you have taken time to read this letter and understand how disappointed and heartbroken I am. I know I am on the waiting list but I feel rejected and useless. Please do not ignore this and it has been my dream to come to City ever since I got the interview."
In my naivety I kept checking my email for a reply. Three more of my emails have remained unresponded to. The final straw was yesterday when I was finally told - 9 days after I had first asked - that she was 88th on the waiting list! We've asked to be taken off the list. I remain very, very upset. DD prefers not to talk about it.

Yes, I think they are the only three schools which do this.

Is someone started a thread about those schools, I expect I'd be saying much the same thing on that thread as in this.

It's a bad system, rare for good reasons.

Not sure Highgate is doing this? Certainly not "plenty". Yes, Channing has got off lightly - maybe because Channing doesn't make a big deal of its "ethos"?

Because offering at a level where it takes 9 hours for offers to explode is a whole other order of insanity. That and how they managed communications. I think Channing took about a week. But point taken, not better, we just happened to fall foul of City!

Can I ask why City is getting such a kicking over this when plenty of other schools operate the same practice (Highgate, Channing)? And those schools don't have the same space restrictions as City?

expat96 - if your question is pointed to am I frustrated by those hoping to take up a grammar school or equivalent place? No. But Grammar schools are a different proposition based soley upon postcode and academic ability. So not open to everyone. In my own DD's situation, I chose City over a Grammar school. Mainly because a) the local Grammar school would not have provided the music opportunities available to her at City b) we are fortunate in our circumstances to be able to afford private education c) the commute to any Grammar would've been longer than the journey to city.

Whilst I am not expecting a medal for not taking up a grammar school place, just so we are clear, where we live there are no secondary schools rated at 'good' or above if you discount Grammar schools 10+ miles away. So Unless we are prepared to become religious to gain access to a school by what is essentially in my opinion deception, (I do have a religion as does my DD but we are not practising) we are not overrun with choice unless we consider independent education.

Prada
Absolutely no one has said what you’ve suggested. At all.

expat96 - I am not sure what response you are expecting by your question. Do I wish every child in the country had unfettered access to excellent education? Of course I do. The fact is, whatever flavour government has been in place, this has not been achieved. I am however, genuinely mystified by posters opining that the school is some sort of dirt-ridden lord-of-the-flies hellhole whilst simultaneously placing a £1500 deposit so they can decide if they want to send their child to it. It is not, and has not, ever claimed to be a school with rolling fields, wood-pannelled libraries and limitless parking for umpteen cars at parents evening. If that is seriously the comparison for some parents, my point is, maybe their selection criteria is not the same as others. Enthusiastic Teaching is important to me, not whether or not my non-sporty child has 10 acres to do cross country in.

That is why is is so frustrating to see that there are some parents reserving places at a school they consider to be 'grimy'. If that is your genuine opinion, why block another child taking a place?

Pradaqueen,

Does your frustration extend to those parents who are hoping to get a place at a good state school next week?

In principle, the approach itself, I personally think is okay and I personally think it is understandable in Citys circumstances.

ChocolateWombat,

I can understand why you support City's desire to limit the number of accepted places. I may or may not agree with that City needs this so much more than other schools, but I can understand it.

I cannot understand, however, your defense of the approach. It is, prima facie, a broken system. If there is any possibility that the number of (even temporarily) desired places exceeds the number of places available, the equilibrium solution devolves into a queue forming up at 10:00 on the Friday before half-term, lasting until 09:00 on the following Monday. I'm not even going to go into the possible distributional effects against those of more limited means, or the potential effects on the types of girls selected. I'm merely pointing out that this system is unstable.

TheInvisibleHand

I don't know SHHS at all but I'm sure your DD will have a wonderful time there. I totally sympathise with you about this year's admissions experience as detailed by you and others. Not much use I know, but I can only reiterate that it is the complete opposite experience to my own last year. Part of the attraction was the absolute efficiency of admissions and its clarity. It is clear that is missing this year.

Well, if we can extrapolate from @backingvocals post (6 offers, 3 forfeited £1.5k places, 3 further waiting list places declined), City might actually find itself under-rolled this year as well as everything else. The law of unintended consequences in full effect.

Prada - the frustrating thing is that the things you describe are to a large extent what appealed to us about the school in the first place. I am perfectly prepared to accept that the experience in the school reflects that - it was what I saw (perhaps superficially) in two open days and during the process. The admissions process is not just unfortunate though, it is at odds with that ethos and spirit. It isn't just one email that was lost in the system - I have written 2 others alerting them to the fact that she had been in touch and that it might be courteous to reply. That fault may lie with admissions but is not accidental.

DD will no doubt settle happily enough at South Hampstead (which she liked), but has been left with rather a harsh life lesson, which I wish she had not had to experience.

Needmoresleep

I understand what you are saying and why. But I still maintain that the 9 hour explosion (as opposed to the 13+ days last year) has been largely fuelled by FOMO for a significant number of parents as opposed to deposits being made by parents who actually want their child to attend. I can only speak from experience of my own DD's class, it would appear that most of the class deposited in those 13 days, and all turned up in September. I do not think that will be the case in September 2018.

Carltonscroop - I am not familiar with the stats of other schools. I have attended more than one head teachers address at open days and city was certainly one of the few to mention family economic circumstances so openly. I do also know that City is one of the few schools that operates a taster day for exclusively Y6 girls from state primary.

Prada, doesn't your third para effectively acknowledge that selection has shifted slightly from being those girls who performed best in the exam and at interview, to those girls who performed well AND who have parents that are quickest of the mark/most able to risk forfeiting £1500.

And that change will, to some extent, change both the make-up of the parent body and on the ethos of the school.

That was my takeaway from the offer day - that this admissions process has not matched the ethos of the school and that they themselves don't think it has.

That's why the furious defence of this outcome has been a bit odd. Nobody thinks it's ok including City. Fair enough I'm extrapolating here from one conversation at CLSG but it was with a senior teacher who was clearly genuine in her view.

Anyway I think this is more a PR problem for City now. Their communications are not matching up to their ethos or their stated process. They have made themselves stand out this year and not in a good way. All the other schools are gleefully pointing out that they are soooooo much nicer and kinder....

I do think it's a super school and I would love DD to go there. But it seems she won't because her heart is set somewhere else so that's probably the end of the story for us. I think the task for City now is to get someone in charge of this process who can improve the communications and work out how to avoid this next year.

Interestingly, of the I think six girls at our state school who got offers, only one is going there. Three exploded much to the surprise of those concerned, and two will go elsewhere. I don't conclude anything from that other than to say there will still be some movement in the Waiting List.

"I would say that one of the factors Is the fact that over 25% of girls receive financial assistance to enable them to attend."

So not particularly high - if your point of comparison is GDST, the Dulwich foundation, Emanuel, St Paul's and probably others.

And how the school wants to appear to prospective parents is important. I can see you don't want to admit, even to yourself, that your school is showing a lack of integrity in its admissions (to the extent of flouting ISC rules), nor that that in itself points to what the school is like.

After all, if you'd done what you did this year, you wouldn't have got a place. Still happy with the school knowing that you're not really the sort of committed first choice parent that this system is meant to find?