City of London Girls withdrawing offers

• those less well off feel comfortable.

Invisible - I am sorry to hear about your DD missing out on a place and not replying to your DD. The school knows that the admissions department this year has not matched up to the efficiency of the past and I would imagine that the email is caught up somewhere. No one is going to defend not replying to a child.

Admissions department opinions aside, and it cannot be reasonable for anyone to expect current parents to somehow fix this, from the PM's alone that I have received, it would appear that some postings on this thread have meant that some parents (who necessarily have not posted on this thread) but genuinely want a place/have reserved a place at the school are concerned about what is being posted about the school ethos, parents and children who attend. As a current parent, I do not need to speculate on these matters as I have actual experience. It would be bizarre of me to comment on the 'type' of parents/girls etc at NLC for example. I don't know what they are like as my child does not attend that school. An anecdote passed about a neighbour's daughter (or whatever) does not make it fact.

For those who don't know, the school was founded on charitable principles and maintains them very strongly. It is certainly not a 'dog eat dog' environment nor a place for girls (or Parents) with 'sharp elbows'. There is a huge emphasis on collaboration- both between the girls and parents and the school. 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? Places are awarded on a first come, first served basis (as we are all aware) and to potentially block a child whose family financial circumstances are marginal is not something I would consider to be celebrated to somehow 'teach the school a lesson'.

For those who are asking 'why is City so special' I would say that one of the factors Is the fact that over 25% of girls receive financial assistance to enable them to attend. This ranges from full awards downwards and a great deal of effort is made in every respect to ensure that those well off feel comfortable. It is definitely not a 'monied' environment and for some of us, yes, there may be other Indie schools nearer in terms of miles (but not necessarily nearer in terms of an actual commute) but tons of families where everyone has a world class dressage pony and a ski chalet in Switzerland is not real life. Even if you can afford those things. The financial assistance for a lot of girls is thanks to legacies and funding from the livery companies that help to make up the city of London corporation. There is a huge amount of work which takes place by the school and the corporation behind the scenes to provide this Assistance. In doing so, There is a huge diversity in the girls both in terms of economic background and location. All of whom have earned their place at the school.

So please, feel free to attack the admissions process. But unless you are a parent at the school (and your experience is vastly different to every CLSG parent who has posted on this thread), not the girls, parents or charitable ethos of it. Mumsnet is at its finest when truly helpful information is shared to help parents make informed decisions.

As others have done, if you would like a query addressed as to what is like to have a child at the school, please do feel free to PM me. I do wish all girls the very best with whatever school they choose to attend.

"but parental annoyance at the seeming arrogance of a school denying them what they think is their right to have lots of time to choose."

It is their right.

Read the ISC rule linked earlier in the thread. Offers stay open until the first Monday in March.

This is quite a dramatic way for CLSG to quit that body (because given the ridiculousness of this system, they surely cannot ignore the flagrant breach of independent school standards and allow continued membership)

Just think - you get all your offers in Friday, whilst your DD is in school so you wait until she is home to talk about it, and that takes you last the end of the working day. So you decide to mull it over and check your decision is right, and respond on Monday morning. And you're too late. This really stinks.

And nothing that has been said on the thread puts CLSG into a special, unique situation.

And the idea that this somehow improved the cohort? Correlation is not causation. Other schools have been reporting rising exam marks too. It's a normal fluctuation, not the result of this policy. I think the word used above 'transactional' is a good choice for the underlying ethos. I get that parents with DDs in the school don't like to hear criticism. But any school that can do this, in breach of ISC policy, would really give me pause.

Followed this for a while. The camping out next year won't be the only issue. There will surely be people sending a deposit cheque before the places get allocated.

invisible I am so angry on your behalf. Your dd sounds amazing. I hope you have other alternatives, any school would be lucky to have your daughter.

soya and any other existing parents - I would be interested to hear your view on CLSG ignoring emails from both parents and girls.

There has been so much about this now in the media, have CLSG made any sort of statement?

Failure to respond to a child's email is unforgivable and just adds insult to injury. Invisible, your daughter deserves better.

I am sorry for all girls impacted by City admission treatment, I could see us to be in the same position next year. I wish other schools will learn from City and consider it as very bad practice and not consider to do similar thing. Similar to other working professionals we might just be able to afford the fee, the state schools result is an important factor to decide. We (and I believe many other “average” Londoners) could only make the decision when we know what it is on the table: fees vs nonfee, if fees then other factors came in, a second visit might be needed, asking family, friends, researching. £1500 is alot to waste (and I’dike to treat my acceptance with respect ) and we shouldnt be bullied to do so. Its a great school, give offer holders time to fully think through and consider all aspects with confidence. For us, the journey to school will be 50 mins door to door which I would still consider for my daughter however I would apply ONLY if the school has made effort in changing their admission policy and/or make it more reasonable and fairer. Above all, schools are places we send our children to, we’d like them to learn before academic/extra curr any thing else to treat others with fairness, kind and respect(and not in a chaos/business manner). This hasnt been what City treated some of their offer holder children the last couple of years.

City is not a special geographic case despite what parents say.

Channing is not a special case either and they draw their pupils from North London only I'd imagine.

It's just entitled behaviour and as consumers we can vote with our feet or not.

I wonder if the board of governors is supportive of this approach or is it purely an SLT decision? I suppose they would at least be aware. If I were a Chair I would be having a very tough discussion at the next meeting, but I guess they don't care.

I am sorry for the people genuinely caught out by all of this. Whilst I don't think the vast majority who had offers explode would have chosen City in the end, some would have done. I can see for those, it leaves a very nasty taste and for some, a sense that that the situation just wasn't spelled out clearly enough and far enough in advance, so that people knew they needed to be around.

Some people know well in advance that CIty offers explode. They knew what happened last year and this year could be worse - either through reading threads like this from last year, or from Prep Heads warning, or perhaps very careful reading of small print and checking with the school. Information was available, but I agree that the school has a duty to make it more obvious and more frequent, especially as it an approach most schools don't use.

In principle, the approach itself, I personally think is okay and I personally think it is understandable in Citys circumstances. However, it must be crystal clear to people - if it is crystal clear, then you know that if you go on holiday or delay, you might lose out.

Why wasn't it made clearer? I guess City don't want people to be put off applying in the basis that they use this approach - they want a big field of students to choose from. They probably would say it was made clear. In the end there is an onus on the school to make it absolutely crystal clear, but also on parents to be fully aware of the situation. Were the school at fault in its info provision - it probably could have been clearer earlier on. What about parents - perhaps some needed to make more efforts to be fully aware of the systems in place and implications - but the school did need to provide the information first.

I hope those who absolutely wanted City as top choice and who missed out either get places from the WL (and some places will become available from that route) or have somewhere to go that they are happy with and their DD can feel excited about. Of course, I hope it for all of the families, but know that for many City was never their top choice anyway.

"Top, academic schools live and die based on having the right number of students and having those of high enough ability to make the school financially viable and to deliver the results that parents expect."

I think there is another element. Certainly schools like LU and Westminster seem to pay a lot of attention to their founding principles. They are supposed to be charities not businesses, their function is to educate, which is something that goes beyond grades. Bursaries help, but I understand that there is also a concern about he "missing middle". In an age of dramatic tutoring (DS once described the routine of a classmate, where, had the school not stepped in, I would have been tempted to call SS) and parents able to drop £1,500 in order to get a couple more weeks to decide, schools may lose their diversity. I am not sure I would want my child to attend a school where the sharp elbowed, grade-obsessed, monied and super-organised, were dominent. Call me old-fashioned but we always sought a element of jollyness in our DCs education. Education should be fun. Happy children, encouraged to be individual but caring and to pursue their interests, will hopefully make successful (in a broader sense) adults.

If City want to be a high achieving school educating the scions of high achieving City folk, they are taking the right approach. It used to have a reputation of being relatively down to earth, with a fair number of kids from state primaries. I think the expansion of the catchment to the East, due to regeneration and improved transport links is an opportunity to improve both diversity and increase cohesion. Instead they may be caught in a cycle of having to meet ever increasing parental expectations in terms of results, at the expense of providing the broader education that young people and society need.

I remember meeting the mum of a Yr 7 SPGS child who may well have been OVienna's neighbour. SPGS was a fantastic school, her DD was incredibly bright etc. Did her DD enjoy the school? No. She hated the journey, and having to commute at the weekend to meet up with friends in Westfield.

And InvisibleHand, what has happened to your daughter is shocking. Unacceptable. Our DD is dyslexic so it was far from clear who might offer her a place. She sat five, and slightly to our surprise, got two. We have been very careful not to focus on any one school. Any would be acceptable. We then let her go into her (prep) school and talk to her favourite teacher about the options. The teacher gently guided her towards the school we also though was best for her. But her choice. She had to go there. If that offer had exploded before she got her head round the decision, she would have been distraught.

Thanks Lotsofsighing - we obviously think she is awesome too!

Maybe we are naive, but gaming the system was very far from our thoughts. DD sat 3 private schools, all pretty academic, on the basis we couldn't guarantee she would get in, but given that we have perfectly acceptable state school alternatives, we weren't going to go for private schools for the sake of it. She totally utterly did her part (as did we) and secured 2 offers out of 3. To be honest, I could even have lived with the exploding offer system (though yes, a half term break and just a few days of reflection would be nice), if it's implications had been spelt out more plainly and I could have managed DD's expectations appropriately. But that really wasn't the tenor of the offer letter. I am a capable professional person - it might have been in the small print, but it wasn't intended to be focused on.

TheInvisibleHand, I'm sorry to hear that but your daughter sounds completely awesome. I really feel that City won't deserve her.

Maybe we're idiots but we genuinely did not know which school was our favourite before offers day. We knew there were probably two that were ahead of the others and if we got them both we'd go to the offers day and then choose by the end of the week. This means within two weeks of receiving the offer and well before the deadline. Some posters seem to be suggesting this is ludicrously indecisive of us and that we just like collecting offers for smugness.

I also resent the implication that going on a half term holiday is a dereliction of parental duty. We went round the bleeding schools, we worked in the Christmas holidays, we turned up for exams and interviews. I don't know, I just thought that maybe we'd be allowed a holiday at the end of it especially since it was with family after a bereavement.

I have followed this thread from the beginning, but have held back from commenting so far. I'm afraid the constant assertions that this has no impact on the girls are just not right. DD was one of those girls whose offer was withdrawn. We, as parents, had been clear City was our first choice all the way through, but discussed that with her over the weekend. Ironically, I had taken her away for a long weekend to celebrate her hard work, thinking we could safely accept on the Wednesday. In the event, I was on my own with her when my husband called frantically to say the offer had gone.

Although she didn't have strong views on which school she wanted to go to, she felt the unfairness of the situation - rightly or wrongly we hadn't appreciated the implications of the offer, she is at a new state school where there was no advice or experience to guide us and we had been distracted by a recent bereavement. Her main reaction was to reassure me that the situation was not my fault. From her perspective (and the offer email, as with others from City was very much designed to be read by her) she had an offer, which has somewhat inexplicably disappeared.

DD email the school of her own initiative (I did not see a draft before it went) to set out her take on the process and suggest the school might do it differently in future years. They have failed to respond to her (never mind to us).

What has DD taken away from this? That institutions with authority behave badly and don't admit to their mistakes or face into the implications of their actions. If she does get offered a waiting list place and we take it, that is a long way from the best place to start.

I still think that a lot of the angst about this isn't actually to do with girls being distraught and having offers they really wanted to accept whipped out from under their noses, but parental annoyance at the seeming arrogance of a school denying them what they think is their right to have lots of time to choose.

Here we are, a couple of weeks after offers day and already, lots of people have moved on significantly from where they were a couple of weeks ago....in light of the offers they have. Parents and children adjust quickly, especially when they weren't dead set on a school and most of those who were dead set, accepted a place anyway. Although people say they need more time to choose, in reality, most people know where they will accept. If they are forced to do it speedily, then most can do that, but if they are given longer to accept, many will take longer to get the paperwork in....not because there is loads more to think about, but because it's human nature to do so and because lots of parents find it hard to let go of the offers from other great schools and accept that after a long old process of uncertainty and keeping ones options open, it's finally over and sorted. Lots of people would love to hold loads of offers and avoid committing finally for as long as possible.

So those who had a City offer explode have now mostly moved on mentally - that's children and parents. Most of them were never going to take City anyway, but go to one of the other great schools that is probably nearer to where they live. Some of these have accepted their offers and others won't do so until the final deadline, because they can't bring themselves to the finality of it. Most could make a choice today if pushed. Most will be happy with their choice when they make it and in the years to come when their child is at the given school, most are happy. I believe that the angst people talk about for the children and the unfairness for the children is much exaggerated. Some children have very clear ideas on their preference and voice it to parents, but many, rightly choose to leave the final choice to their parents and especially if applying to lots of schools, barely know or can remember the difference between them. Yes, they are excited by results day and everyone likes to have a number of offers. Usually there is a sense already if what the top option might be and if an offer from somewhere else explodes, it might be a bit surprising, but for the majority who were never going to accept it anyway, it doesn't fill their thoughts for lomg. The people it seems to fill the thoughts of are parents who feel annoyed on principal rather than practicality, in my view....and whilst I understand the approach is unpopular, I think that the school have simply made a rational decision given their location making over offering without explosion to control intake for their severely restricted site, whilst facing the problem of so many applying without it being their top choice due to geographical location.

I agree that things will probably be different next year. The school won't want people camping out and I'm sure they will avoid this. The fact that offers exploded early last year, that this year they offered less and they still exploded far sooner does show the uncertain tules and lack of info the school have when offering. I don't see this as a failure to do their homework beforehand, but simply a function of the fact that huge huge numbers apply and whilst there are more than enough who are both good enough and will choose City first, there are far more others who will accept an alternative offer....and City simply cannot know which are which.

It might be possible to impose a much tighter deadline of just a few days and then go to wait list. This would however be difficult because schools have an agreement about deadlines and can't really unleash a system where they all do their own thing regarding this - the competition which would ensue to get candidates would be far more unseemly than just exploding offers. City have officially kept the same deadline as the other schools, but their exploding offers is a way of both sticking to the letter of the law and manipulating it at the same time. Finding a new agreement for these schools about admissions would be hard to achieve. Self interest would be strong. The current system goes back a lomg way and has broadly worked, although better for some schools than for others and probably for all, works less well in this age of multiple applications and uncertainty about who will accept offers - more of a problem in some areas than others, according to just how many schools are in that area, how many schools of a similar type and locational flexibility to run bulge classes.

Perhaps schools will go for a shorter deadline overall so they have more info sooner. All difficult when there are state school offers to consider too - again more of an issue for some schools than others A some will lose very many good candidates to state grammars, but others very few. It will be interesting to see what transpires.

What is certain, is that schools will continue to look to their futures and to take actions to prioritise those. Top, academic schools live and die based on having the right number of students and having those of high enough ability to make the school financially viable and to deliver the results that parents expect. Admsissions is all about doing that in reality. Part of this process is turning down many at different stages of the applications process, and this will have to continue to happen in one form or another.

This already is the 3rd year running that City has had exploding offers. The admissions was a shambles this year, rife with misinformation and confused communications.
Why do they keep doing it? Because they can. They can, in part because the centre of gravity has moved east in London. They are central and can compete with the whole of London geographically, but have the Northeast as their own personal hunting ground. Lots of families there now and no competition in their league.
I miss Diana Vernon. The place feels more expensive, more formal, and more transactional since she left.

There are clearly families on the outskirts of London that, possibly having missed out on SPGS, think that City is the next best thing, hence why a poster earlier on was mentioning that her DD has girls in her class coming from Surrey. How ridiculous is that! How many good schools would they travel by each day before getting to City?
Or other families getting their girls travelling in from Essex bypassing other very good and much more local schools. It’s the parents obsession with league tables that results in these absurdities.
Back to the admission/offer system - it’s naive to believe that City is somewhat in a trickier situation than other academic, in demand schools when it comes to judge how many acceptances they will receive. They are a highly achieving, very sought after school (as proven by how far many families are willing to get their girls to travel there) and they know it. If they now have even more families applying from the “Canary Wharf area” then it should make their job easier, not harder.

"Well City has sent another email today about the waitlist today. There at least 50 girls on the waiting list..."

Which shows that they are severely over-offering, because quite a lot will have dropped out post-explosion, as they will commit to their other schools.

Nothing on this thread suggests the schools admissions admin is of the same standard as that if other London schools.

And I don't really get why CLSG thinks it is unique in some way. Lots of London schools have no room to accommodate a bulge class (or can manage one only once in a blue moon) and have applicants from a wide area of the capital (the demographics of number of local resident children really isn't relevant)

SPGS is the holy grail in our area of East London. You do get bonkers parents applying for it and the numbers seem to be increasing.

It's in fecking HAMMERSMITH. You live in BUCKHURST HILL. WTAF.

They don't seem to care so much about going as being able to say they got in or even to say: "My daughter is applying to St Paul's."

I do see that the schools have to figure out how to mitigate against people like this. I don't think City's strategy is the way forward though. There will be a tent city in the Barbican from 48 hrs before.

That makes sense, though they don't always adhere to that, it must depend on the girl. I know of two girls that commute from south Buckinghamshire, which I guess is an hour away. And then there are the girls that move from further afield to be closer to the school. I think most schools in London must get applications from all over England and the world for that matter, and its up to their admissions team to figure out who fits into their school.

SPGS have said "Girls are required to live within a reasonable distance of the school and should not be travelling for more than 50 minutes each way. We may decline to pursue an application
where in our opinion it may require an unrealistically demanding journey for the girl."
They have said similar for the last few years I think

Well City has sent another email today about the waitlist today. There at least 50 girls on the waiting list...

Plus SPGS drawing boundaries, etc, etc

I don't think they actually do, or this is something new to this year. I also don't think that all families have a first choice from birth. We honestly had a very hard time choosing and in the end my DD made the choice. What was her first choice in y5 was not in by the end of the process.

An alternative might be to copy the approach used by some medical schools and in demand courses at Universities like LSE or Durham. Split applicants into yes, no or holding. Then give the initial offers a much tighter deadline, perhaps a week, to accept (with a bit of unadvertised wiggle room for those who put a good argument for a need to wait) and tell the holding group that the school, because of its capacity issues, is not in a position to offer a place immediately, but hopes to be able to do so within 7 working days. Asking that anyone who is no longer interested in being made an offer to let them know asap.

Manage the middle group pro-actively and keep them updated. Then hopefully you can have made the right number of offers to your preferred applicants before the general acceptance day.

(Both my DC received University offers towards the end of March having applied in October. The wait was not fun, but they got their places and the Universities got the right numbers.)

Thank you expat

I know CLSG has limited space therefore cannot accommodate an extra class. But academically it is no different from other outstanding independent schools in London such as NLCS, SPGS and so on.

But that still doesn't excuse how they have handled their admissions process.

The idea that some parents don't care about their children enough to have foreseen this escalation is bizarre. And unattractively smug

Completely agree with this. I really hope the situation resolves happily for those poor girls.