Hi all,
I know MN is not a source of legal advice but I would love to hear any thoughts or experiences on my current situation.
We chose an indy all-girls school for DD as we wanted an all-girls environment. The week after the schools broke up for the summer last year, we received a letter saying the school was going to merge with its 'brother' school next door to be co-ed, the change was planned for Sept this year. (VAT forced the move.)
So, 14 months notice to move. Not ideal, but workable timelines.
However, early in the autumn term, it became clear that both school buildings were now operating as shared spaces. The doors between the schools that had been permanently locked with only SLT having keys were propped open and the kids of both sex were mixing unsupervised as the boys were using classrooms in the girls' area and vice versa.
The school said that didn't count as the lessons remained single sex.
We then found out that there were ongoing issues with sexual violence within some of the boys' year groups and we were worried that our DD would be exposed to this - a major reason we wanted all-girls was to avoid this kind of risk. I have to say nothing happened to DD, but we were unhappy with a previously all-girls environment now allowing for unsupervised mixing between boys and girls, including boys who have subsequently been expelled for sexual assault and harassment.
So we found a new school for DD and gave notice three weeks into the autumn term. She continued for the rest of the autumn term and it was frankly a shit show as the poor teachers were put through consultation, lots were laid off, it was not handled well and there were multiple cases of cover lessons with no teachers (in one of these, DD and her friends had to deal with a medical emergency as there were no teachers nearby to help), teachers were in tears in lessons etc.
The issue is, TECHNICALLY, we still owe last term's fees in lieu of notice because we did not give notice before the start of term (as we were only given notice of the planned changes after the holidays started and were assured things would remain as they were for a full academic year).
We feel that the school was not the all-girls environment we chose for our DD and the usual clause about 'given reasonable notice' of changes was not followed as the space became shared between boys and girls within a few weeks of term starting (even though lessons remained single sex).
I think the push for shared space came from the school wanting to project a functioning co-ed environment to prospective new parents but it did rather scupper our expectations of an all-girls school.
Do you think we should continue to contest the payment of fees in lieu or are we basically scuppered and need to suck it up and take the hit?
TLDR: DD's all girls school started mixing boys and girls everywhere but in lessons, unsupervised and with no notice to parents, but are still insisting we owe them a term's fee in lieu of notice as we moved her to get her away from boys committing sexual violence and harassment (not involving her directly)
Any thoughts would be hugely welcome! Thanks :)