Private school underperformed I think my friend should get a refund. AIBU?

[Rambler96]

Friends daughter did her A levels at a posh girls school in Shrewsbury and failed to get the grades she needed for her university place. Now all the results are published, it looks like the school has massively underperformed for some reason. I think she should get a refund on some of the fees.

Where we live there are various private/independent school options. There's a traditional prep school that fancies itself but is a bit too sporty to compete with the mighty force of 2 other local private schools that have straight through from age 3 options but started from a base more like private grammar schools. The prep school feeds a minor (very minor) public school. There are also various other prep schools and private offerings for those who don't want to attend fairly excellent state options or find themselves unable to contemplate living in a smaller house to be in catchment.

But when it really gets interesting is at A Level as we have 2 really good sixth forms. One is attached to a private grammar the other is a state sixth form college. Needless to say, many leave private school settings for state sixth form.

More towards the point of the original post, how do these sixth forms achieve their outstanding results? Selectivity is the answer. They only accept students who meet the required grades. Additionally, at the state sixth form college they don't let anyone continue with further maths beyond term 1 if they aren't meeting strict criteria, if a student is deemed to be underperforming in a subject at the end of Yr 12, they switch subjects to an intensive one yr A Level.

So, what about the minor public school? They maintain good results by weeding out kids before GCSE/after GCSE. Selectivity.

It's all a bit ruthless to say the least. But only really a problem if parents and children don't alter their world view sufficiently to avail themselves of the numerous other schools and colleges that offer a lot of great options. Sadly, I think that parents stuck with the notion that private schools will offer something better than state schools and colleges do sometimes miss the boat. We have an excellent FE college here whose music tech courses are outstanding, for example.

I don't believe any school can make a child who is naturally a C grade ability an A grade, no matter how expensive!

But do you tell them they are an A and encourage them to apply to places that require A grades if you know they are C grade students?

No school, teacher or tutor can guarantee results. Children aren’t taught in lab conditions where their school is the sole influence.

edited to add: I’m not being unsympathetic, btw. It’s just that there is no way to pin it on the school unless something proven occurred such as them being taught the wrong spec or if they had supply teachers for the year.

If it’s the entire cohort, that sounds like a problem. However, bear in mind that a small cohort only needs a few pupils to drop a few grades for the % pastorates to be skewed a fair bit.

*pass rates. I can’t string a sentence together tonight!

It looks like a small cohort (36) so results can wildly fluctuate with these numbers. My son went to a village (state) primary with a small cohort. He was in a very high performing year group. It catapulted the school up published national lists wildly and they haven't matched it since.

Three years below him there was a cohort who struggled and when they came to sit SATS there was a lot of noise and hand wringing around the school failing etc because results took a significant drop. Since then they’ve levelled out, but I don’t think you can entirely trust the numbers when they are below 40.

I know the school and yes she may have done better at the sixth form college. However that doesn’t mean she’ll get a refund.

If your friend is that concerned, then she needs to make her feelings known to the chair of governors (info on school website). Although the focus will be different (keep things quiet so as not to rock the boat with current or prospective parents rather than a thorough investigation into what went wrong) the governors should still be asking these questions to the leadership team, even if it is behind closed doors, and your friend’s experience, and that of others, may be valuable to them.

Otherwise the choices now are accept the grades or retake. Not much else can be done!

What do you mean by "better qualified".

This is the school? - Congratulations to our class of 2025 | Shrewsbury High School

Isnt it just more likely that this particular cohort of girls were a bit dim (possibly like their parents), and so their results were a bit mediocre?

It’s none of your business.

So the school told them all they would get good grades and encouraged them to apply to unobtainable universities with inflated predicted grades knowing their dreams would be dashed?

Did they?

Numbers getting A/A* at A level more than halved this year, from 40-41% in 2023 and 2024 to 18% in 2025, so OP has a point. Something has collapsed.

Actual numbers fell too, from 41 students to 36 - were there a number of expulsions in the year group, or is this a sign of their cohort struggling to recruit?

There has been some fluctuation in numbers over the last decade: A-level-results-2025.pdf

Classes are obviously very small at A level. Art is the only subject with more than 10 entries, and perhaps no coincidence that that gets the best results. Do they have qualified subject teachers in each subject?

What sometimes happens with students who are told they are doing well is they misjudge how much work they still need to put in to achieve the grades. A student who studies hard and does enough past papers can overcome poor teaching.

This is a really helpful post and gives a lot of info. Thank you.

It doesn’t matter how many times you say you think your friend should get a refund – and you have certainly said it many times! – It’s not going to happen. I’m not sure why you are so involved anyway but you would be better served directing your friend’s time and attention towards her daughter’s future and ensuring that she makes the best use of whatever grades she did receive. I’m sure there are also other factors involved in the results of this cohort. For starters a sixth form of 36 really isn’t sustainable. Did the parents not think about this? Can your friend honestly say that her daughter worked hard or did she think that because she was at a “posh girls school” and predicted A or A* that they were just going to fall into her lap? It doesn’t matter what the predictions are, it still takes a lot of hard work to get there.

Pupil numbers are on a downward trend.

They made the most of teacher assessed grades in 2021 (they played the game)

It would only take a few girls doing unexpectedly poorly to bring the percentages down. There were only 107 exam entries for 36 girls and a lot of tiny classes. If I were the school, I think I would reduce the number of subjects I offered. But a surprising number of subjects with no grades above a C.

The next biggest classes after Fine art; biology, maths and psychology with classes of 8 or 9 did poorly too. So it is not just about class size.

Tbf (and I hope I didn't crow, tho I am not a fan of the phrase "posh girls’ school") the OP's OP did not give all the detail that has since been clarified.

It does look as though a number of students have done less well than the cohorts from previous years. Maybe the school should look into why – maybe it already is. I agree that is small consolation to the students and I genuinely cannot see the school offering refunds.

If those A level results linked are the correct ones tho – wow we are talking about a small cohort. There are As and A-stars in there – not many but then there are so few students that it doesn't take much to skew the figures – 3-4 students variously having a bad few days will do it.

My DD gained way under her predicted, as did a couple of her friends. There were 120 in her sixth form, but in a cohort of 35 she and they would have made a bigger difference. A poor teacher (the psych and business grades are not good for example) or, more likely with those kinds of numbers, a non-specialist teacher, will make a lot of difference. If I were planning for my DC to go to this school I would interrogate the experience and knowledge of the teaching staff with care. Apart from art, no subject has more than 9 candidates. Did the school really have a specialist teacher of politics for two candidates, of economics for three?

That table that @Ellmau gives us is very interesting. How can they afford to run 5 different A Level courses with only a single candidate taking each of them? In those courses three candidates got a B grade (results were B B B A A*).

With their overall sixth form numbers it must be disproportionately expensive to run, but I imagine they have to keep it going otherwise recruitment would drop in the lower years.

I do think that parents need to do more research when deciding which independent school to send their children to.

Going on a name, a brand, reputation or maybe past results isn't always the best. Looking into the background of the teaching staff would be a way to do deeper analysis. Or the previous experience of the SLT.

Choosing an independent with teachers without QTS over a state school with experienced teachers is always going to be risky. Also how long those teachers have been teaching. With all the best will in the world, an unqualified teacher or a teacher of only 3 years, is not going to buy you the best standard of teaching. Enthusiasm, yes. Intelligence, yes. But that's not what parents pay for.

An experienced teacher. Ideally an examiner in the subject AND of the exam board your child will sit their exam in (really good schools encourage their teachers to become examiners - it's the best CPD there is). There are ways to check out the quality of the teaching, without relying on OFSTED (who are no real judge anyway).

Subject MA, QTS, examiners in the schools chosen exam boards.

Sorry but this is just massively entitled.

I find it amusing that the OP believes that someone should take responsibility for the results and that it shouldn't be the pupils themselves.

The truth is that many pupils take it for granted that they will get the grades that they need, especially when they have never been allowed to fail.
Have always been told how smart/clever/intelligent that they are.
That there predicted grades are high (not predicted)
and that the colleges/university have offered them a place.

It could be the school
It could be the head and new polices
It could be new teachers
It could be teachers being forced out.
But it could equally be the attitude of the pupils and parents.

The table of breakdown of results by subject is really interesting. Apart from art they seem to have really struggled. Surprised to see Chemistry results weren’t better given the head is a Chemistry teacher and would therefore you’d have thought kept a close eye on that subject.
I’m going to suggest my friend puts a complaint in to the board of governors as it’s important going forward that these issues are ironed out, whether she gets a refund or not.

A lesson for other parents choose sixth form wisely