11+ Offer withdrawals First Come, First Served

[Asiro]

I saw some old posts about offer withdrawals based on a ‘first come, first served’ system, where all places are filled even before the acceptance deadline (I think it was in 2017). Is this still how senior schools operate? I was planning to make my decision by early March, after Tiffin Girls’ School results day. However, if independent schools still work on a FCFS basis, I’m unsure whether I should accept an offer and pay the deposit even before receiving the grammar school results. May I seek for your advice whether still it's the case?

The last school to do this was City Girls about 5 years ago, and it caused so much upset that, as far as I'm aware, no school has done it since. The schools we applied to last year told us it was against the Independent Schools' Code to have exploding offers (ie FCFS), so I would be very surprised if any schools do them this year. Most schools understand that many parents are also waiting on state school results (including grammars) hence why the private school acceptance date is always a couple of days after national offers day. So don't worry - it should be fine.

A school we applied for strongly suggested in their offer letter that we accept as soon as possible as once they fill up their places for the year group, even if this was prior to the deadline (which was officially after state school offer day), that all subsequent acceptances received would go on a wait list. So whilst not quite an exploding offer it was certainly intended to make you feel that if you didn’t accept quickly there may not be a place left. Of course they’re going to put pressure on, they need to fill the spots. This was for this year’s entry.

This will not happen, there was no school around Tiffin last year that did this, so don't worry about it, you can wait till you hear from Tiffin. They would also say so explicitly in their offer letter. BUt last year WHS/SHS/KGS etc certainly did not have exploding offers.

The schools mention the deadline on the website or emails....you can normally find it somewhere. And like pp said the deadlines are after the state school offers come out...I think usually March 5th is the deadline and offers come March 3rd

The closest to exploding offers last year was the practice of Forest school in Walthamstow, which said that they reserve the right to bring the acceptance deadline forward at short notice, and urged parents to accept asap.

Just to flag that this year the deadline for acceptance for some schools seems to be the same day as National Offer Day for state school places - Monday 3 March. So for anyone wanting to weigh up their state option you won’t have long to decide!

Based on a recent thread I’m pretty sure that any school signed up to a group/code doesn’t do these anymore and most schools in London I believe are now aligned with national offer day being their final acceptance date. That said I think some schools only give until lunch maybe to finally accept or decline so as pp said a fast decision maybe needed.

We had a front row seat for the CLSG / Channing / Highgate debacle in 2018. I certainly haven't heard much about offers actually exploding since then. That said, at that time, all the offer letters we received included language in the fine print to the tune of "we reserve the right to withdraw the place if we get too many acceptances".

AFAIK, all private schools still over-offer, i.e., make more offers than they plan to have places. I'm guessing that not all private schools will be willing or able to, for example, add bulge classes if too many children accept those offers. Do they still include language in the offer letters giving them an escape hatch?

How does that work when state school offers come out 6pm!

I wonder whether the schools are simply working on 'State school offer day is 1st March' and kindly allowing their usual couple of days' thinking time, and not considering that the Admissions Code goes on to say, 'or the next working day thereafter' (or words to that effect)?

With regard to those living in LAs where the actual state school offer isn't visible to parents until after the end of the school day, where an independent school, applied to sets an earlier deadline, presumably the first thing to do would be to flag this issue up to the school concerned (giving the admissions manager the benefit of the doubt regarding ignorance / lack of thought re the calendar, vs malicious intent).