Sixth-form girl living alone

[BoboChic]

Do you think that a private mixed sixth form should admit a new pupil who will be living alone in a small rented apartment during the week, returning home to her parents at the weekend?

There are plenty of examples of wrong cultural consensus on this thread - for example, that private schools would be illegally discriminating by refusing entry to a pupil who did not live with a parent.

That's pretty much groupthink isn't it? Nd unfortunately scapegoating this poor student. I'm kind of glad the parents didn't know when their kids were there, imagine how they would have treated the student!

Just because they would like to feel there was a rule, that doesn't make it so. Unless there is concrete evidence of the school agreeing to this rule, or showing that they were enforcing it actively in the past, it doesn't exist!

A 16yo who lives independantly while attending 6th form is not a potential major safeguarding concern for other pupils. Also OP, you said that there were general concerns from the very beginning of sixth form and parents raised them at several opportunities, so it's not as though they were unaware, they simply failed to do anything about it.

This sounds as though this girl and the college are being scapegoated for the failure(?) of their offspring when they attended university.

It's gossip, blame and scapegoating. Ridiculous!

OP:

Genuine question OP., I completely get that you are on side with the parents of the cohort effected by this girl in this illustrative thread.

But at no point (I think) have you placed ANY culpability on their parents, let alone the girl's.

Do you truly believe the blame lies solely with the school?

But actually they MIGHT be illegally discriminating, as far as I understand it. The girl has a right to an education, so the fact that she lives alone might not be considered a good enough reason to refuse to admit her. I don't know. Either way, it's not relevant. They did admit her, and that wasn't a failure or breach of trust on their part. At all. So I don't think the parents have a leg to stand on here.

I lived alone for a while in 6th form in a rented house and attended school (not private) because my parents moved and I didn't want to disrupt my a-levels (I couldn't do the subjects I was doing in new area)
I was fine and actually did better than when at home with my family who had their own issues.
My brother left home and moved in with a GF's family at 16 and was disruptive at school but academically still excelled.
The most disruptive guy in my 6th form lived with his parents and had wild parties - it's all about the person and the circumstances and very little to do with the school.
If other kids in the school were attending wild parties at her flat and their behaviour / results dipped surely their parents should have stepped up and parented. It's not the school it's the parents.

I'm not on anyone's side. I was told the story, at great length, by the mother of a girl who had been in the affected year group. I was interested because I am fundamentally interested in school management issues and have been involved in strategic consultations in schools. The particular story isn't terribly riveting - what interests me are the underlying management principles, whether or not schools are communicating effectively with parents, where misunderstandings arise etc.

How bizarre, in that case, that you are so completely lacking in objectivity and insist on seeing things only from one point of view.

I'm not interested in judging a legal case (and therefore looking at full written evidence from both parties and perhaps using a technicality to let someone off the hook).

I'm interested in the management ramifications i.e. what can a school learn from this moving forward.

There is nothing for them to learn. They haven't done anything wrong.

I guess the school has to decide if they would accept any future pupil in the same circumstances.

But TBH as a parent, even if the school did have a policy not to admit pupils who lived alone, I would make no assumptions that such a policy was being adhered to or that the same problems would not occur in a different household.

Clearly the school is not defending its decision with great vigour! It doesn't exactly cover the school with glory.

The school cannot breach the confidentiality of its pupils. And it shouldn't discriminate against pupils whose living arrangements are not the norm. Perhaps the parents and
"affected" pupils would be better looking at what they should have/could have done, instead of indulging is ridiculous and futile blame game.

Private schools prefer to avoid problems on the whole.

They need to have it as a formal rule like so many other schools do. In fact as someone mentioned above they are lucky really that it was only grades that suffered. As with that tragic Westminster example, this is a very stressful and challenging time for teenagers and without proper support much worse things can happen than missing your UCAS offer grades.

But while I agree with the cultural consensus that school pupils shouldn't be living alone if it can be helped, I don't have much sympathy for the parents of the other students because, come on, if they were on the ball they should have realised their child's academic work was not on track. (Although I am surprised everyone is insisting on this, because on previous MN threads the consensus has seemed to be that both GCSE and A-Level studies are all the student's business and parents have no right to know anything about them and should just let the chips fall as they may.)

I'm surprised this school is so oversubscribed but I suppose that could just be a fluke of geography.

The parents aren't engaging in a blame game. They are highlighting a management and communication issue.

I left home at 16, before sixth form, and did much better in my A levels than I would have done if I had stayed at home. I went on to uni, post grad, career, etc. it depends on the child and the set up.

This is all very convoluted. Basically, OP, this doesn't appear to be any of your business. If the school's revenue goes down as a result of the (totally unreasonable) belief amongst the target demographic that they are to blame for a cohort of students partying their grades away under the less-than-watchful supervision of their own parents, they may review their policy out of pragmatism. Can't see much more that can be said here.

Personally, I have experience of schools making poor decisions and getting involved in improving them. It's quite normal for parents to engage with school...

*Why are you incapable of understanding that the school breached the trust that parents had placed in it to ensure all pupils were living with their families?

The law clearly wasn't broken since pupils did not tell their parents that their fellow pupil was living alone.

Maybe the girl broke the law herself since she did reveal that fact to her fellow pupils?*

Perhaps, OP, you seem to be the one incapable of understanding that there is no law broken here!! A 16 year old is allowed to live on her own and it would be a gross breach of confidentiality on the school's part (and they have no reason to) to reveal that information. Frankly it's no one else's business what any of the kids living arrangements are.

But TBH as a parent, even if the school did have a policy not to admit pupils who lived alone, I would make no assumptions that such a policy was being adhered to or that the same problems would not occur in a different household.

Exactly, there's no guarantee there aren't houses where the parents are well-disguised alcoholics or addicts, or workaholics who are never there, or divorced and leaving the student alone rather than give up one of "their" days. Plenty of rich people neglect their kids - not physically, but emotionally.

I understand that Bobo didn't want to say to her friends face, as her friend dished the gossip "Stop making excuses, you should have known months in advance that your DD was slacking." But come on, Bobo, you can say it to us! She should have known all was not well.

And if the school didn't realise the academic standard had dropped so much, their failings go beyond their acceptance policy, into significant deficiencies in teaching.

You have experience of sticking your oar in, you mean.

OP, what communication issue? What management issue?