Unpaid school debt

[KatieBw]

My now 19 year old DS had attended an independent school for 11 years but in his first gcse year, things started to go really wrong in terms of his behaviour and academic performance. He was being routinely punished through detentions and suspensions to the point where he was one suspension away from expulsion. He had experienced years of his father continually taking me to the family court and it felt to me like everything was impacting at once. Many of his infractions were to do with disorganisation and time-keeping, rather than REALLY bad stuff and I felt that his new senior year teacher didn't really 'get' him, so he had little pastoral support. This time 4 years ago, when he had just turned 15, I went to school to meet with the head and deputy head in what would be my final meeting with them and when my son felt very close to the end of the line.
I had an overwhelming feeling in the meeting that they were 'done' with my DS, there appeared to be no strategy beyond more punishment and no consideration towards what I believed were the deeper underlying causes of his behaviour. I pointed out that his essay scaffolding appeared to be very poor and the head asked if I had "thought about a learning difficulty" and we agreed that my son would be tested for any SEN. I left the meeting feeling very dejected and unsupported and that, without a shift in attitude around my DS, he was inevitably about to be expelled.
Maybe a week later, sen test results confirmed my son had slow processing and I believed this would've accounted for some of his struggle as he clearly had additional educational support requirements that hadn't been met.
This is almost exactly 4 years ago. I had a panic to find another school as few had entry through gcse year. I felt that had no option but to pull him out fast, there had been no further contact from the teachers or the head following the meeting or the sen results, I felt my DS had been really let down and he started at another school straight after Christmas. I had not given a terms notice to the previous school and when they sent me an invoice in the January, I emailed back to inform the bursar that he had left.
In the time since, I have heard nothing from the school and had no correspondence from them. I have moved house but had post forwarded and anyway my usual communication had been via email. My DS is now at uni, once his sen had been realised provisions could be made and he eventually got back on track.
I realised I had been obliged to give a terms notice but actually had felt boxed into a corner and that expulsion was imminent. As so many years have passed and having not heard anything, I have naively - stupidly? - assumed the school felt vaguely complicit and realised I had been left with very few options. That the notice period was null and void. This is largely based on my never having heard from them again.
Today however I received a letter from a collections agency stating the school as their client. This is nearly 4 years later and with no prior notice. I have not managed to speak to either the collections or the school but can anyone advise re my position on this? 1. I do not have the money to pay the bill at all (my financial circumstances are much changed for the worse) 2. I believe that my sons father may have co-signed the original school documentation so therefore would be responsible for at least 50% of the bill. He has been living in France and MIA for many years. 3. Do I have any right to appeal, based on the circumstances above and also the fact I have never received ANY notification re pursuing me? If I had, I could've stated my case, inc the schools failings towards its duty of care OR could've negotiated payment. This has come out of the blue and been a real shock to my system today, would really appreciate any advice, thank you 🙏🏽

@SingHallelujah

Thing is, that horse has bolted. If you weren't happy with them you needed to complain and discuss the outstanding fees then.

Saying it now seems like grasping at straws to avoid the debt.

Sucks but that's how it is.

I'm just trying to explain the circumstances and timeline

Regardless of the debt, I can't help feeling the school DID let him down because there was one unyielding strategy to deal with him and it simply wasn't working. I am not going to aggressively pursue this but I could tell they had just given up on him. I was in a panic and did not want him to have an expulsion on his record. In the final meeting, the head told me he felt my DS was in the "wrong school", it didn't feel like much of an olive branch or offer much hope. He told me he had serious concerns about where DS would end up.

The thing is that you can feel they let him down all you like, based on what you've shared it wouldn't give grounds to argue they've failed in their side of the contract.

For example
If schol only had one strategy and it really wasn't working then I would have expected a parent to be on the phone and arranging meetings long before KS4. Schools will follow their behaviour policies.

You then say that he got minimal pastoral support because his tutor didn't 'get him' one year. Was this discussed with the head of year? Or was it ignored and pulled up later as a way to justify why his behaviour wasn't his fault? If the lack of pastoral care was such that it directly caused your son's behaviour then did you request a tutor group move?

If my child was genuinely only ever in trouble for some time keeping and disorganization then I'd have been on the phone to heads of year and senior leadership the moment it became a trend. The fact you didn't and accepted years of higher level sanctions for apparently only minor issues means you've either ignored it but subsequently want to blame them for your son's situation, or there was much more to it as schools tend not to get to exclusion talks over a little bit of disorganization.

If your child's academic performance was such that you had concerns about SEN then that would have been an issue to raise long before the point when the school said he is facing exclusion.

A head saying that this isn't the school for your DC is something many heads say when a student is getting to the point of being permanently excluded, especially if the situation had gone on for years. Heads draw the line somewhere and they made their position clear that if his behaviour didn't improve the exclusion was on the cards.

If he's got poor GCSEs then that's not ideal, but it does tend to come with the territory of spending 4/5 years of secondary education behaving in a way that leads to repeated detentions/isolations/heading for exclusions.

I see students mess on and get excluded (fixed term usually and occasionally permanently) and one of the common trends is for parents and students to try and find every reason under the sun why it's never their doing and there's usually years of minimising the behaviour. I can think of occasions where the system (in these cases state) have failed students with moderate to complex SEN, but their parents were proactive all the way, never made excuses, and they were heartbreaking cases. This doesn't sound like one of those.

I'm glad you aren't planning on taking a complaint because it would be unlikely to be fruitful, but they're the reasons I think posters who are advising you to launch action against the school and argue you don't have to pay are hugely misguided.

Whether or not the school met your sons needs is not the point. You signed a contract agreeing to terms and failed to meet them. You really can't blame anyone else for that.

Even if the school were so bad that you felt you had to withdraw him, you still needed to give notice that you were terminating the contract.

For you to win a case against the school, you would need to show that you had attempted to remedy the situation within the terms of your contact with them (the sorts of steps outlined by LolaSmiles above) and that no resolution could be reached. Did you have such meetings, and do you still have any contemporaneous record of them?

I would post this on money saving expert forum as you'll get more experienced posters on there. You aren't just going to get debt collectors at your door without it going to court - where you can have your say anyway.

It sounds like they've sold the debt on.

@MrsGradyOldLady What do you think is wrong with the advice on this thread?

(Genuine question, if I've been posting bollocks I think I need to be told!)

Sorry I really didn't mean to imply the advice here was wrong although I can see it does read that way!

It's just that i had a similar problem with an energy debt where I couldn't get a resolution with the energy company and I got advice from there as well as template letters to use.

MrsGradyOldLady
I didn't read your post that way, but can see how it could be interpreted that way.

There's some good advice on this thread and some really silly advice. It would probably be better for the OP to get support engaging with the school and the debt than having people encourage her to take a foolish stance with the school.

Some of the advice on this thread may be very good and relevent but it would serve the OP best to get advice from a forum which specialises in debt. Money Saving Expert and Consumer Action Group have been mentioned. I myself have used CAG and can vouch for the very helpful advice I received in dealing with DCAs who were skirting the law. Forums like these contain those with considerable experience and lawyers who give their advice free because they disagree with how consumers are treated by the corrupt debt industry. The advisers are not there to help people dodge their debts but to ensure that they are treated sympathetically and in accordance with best practice.