GCSE in year admission in Harrow

[SuratNuJaman]

For a kid starting their GCSE year, can he/she travel from Europe and join an English Government run school a month before GCSE exams. Does the Government/Council have a "duty of care" which requires them to place the kid in a school and get them to take thir GCSE exams?

Is there any cut off deadline that the kid must be in a school by say December, for them to take their GCSE exams?

Happy to read legislation myself. If someone here has Administrative experience in a Council with admissions, would love to hear from them. The council for the kid will be Harrow.

I feel for this kid, who will (presumably) :

• be yanked out of a familiar school and (possibly) halfway across the world
• be shoved into whatever school the LA can prevail upon to take them
• have to catch up the GCSE syllabi in two terms (OP, they will not necessarily even get all the subjects they currently study, if timetable doesn't suit this)

All to be entered into some internship scheme or whatever that they may not even get, as presumably 'where GCSEs are sat' is just one of many selection criteria and the child could be unsuccessful for some other reason, in a competitive scheme with limited places.

Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

As established, their duty to give the kid a place does not extend to them letting the kid sit GCSEs. Even if the parents move asap, it's still late in the process so hopefully won't happen, and even if it does, the kid will still be counted as a private school student for future schemes because that's exactly what they are.

Sadly LA waste enormous sums of time and money on legal action they are doomed to lose, over far more desperate situations like this which are NOT of the family's making. But...

There's a thing called a Fair Access Protocol which will ensure that this child is given a school place UNLESS there are no school places at all, which in Harrow is very unlikely indeed. It may not be at a school you would choose, it may be in an alternative provision, but they will almost certainly ensure they have a school place.

Whether they enter them for GCSEs given the timing of the move will be at the school's discretion. They may decide they are only able to sit a small number if they have arrived pretty much at the end of the teaching time and may struggle to catch up with the syllabi. They may not offer the subjects the child is currently studying if there is anything unusual in there so would be unable to enter them for those. Lots of state schools now have very little language teaching for example, or subjects like economics, psychology, politics. You at that point would be able to pay to enter them for the exams privately if you disagreed with that decision.

If these really are rich successful parents do they actually believe their kid once 18 onwards or 21 is going to do what they want? Whatever the kid currently professes their dream job is, may be a long distant memory in the future. Completely bonkers this whole thread!

I was a little flippant to suggest litigation, I guess the times we live in, such thoughts come to the surface quicker than they should.

I too believe getting a place within Harrow should not pose a problem. Will update here. Thank you again for all your help.

Unless they live next door to a secondary school and there’s a space you’ll find it very hard to get a place when you want to in Harrow

You don’t posses any such knowledge though. I know you THINK you do, but really you don’t.

Fortunately, algorithms are immune to attempts at bribery as per the suggestion of 'paying' somebody at the Council earlier and when they aren't Open Source, that also means they cannot be exploited/hacked as easily by the entitled few, any more than paying a couple of thousand in council tax on a home in a different country to where they actually live means they will be able to circumvent laws on student finance in a couple of years' time.

Such a shame that for all their financial advantage, they can't get everything they want just from money and are lacking comprehension skills to understand that sometimes life is fair and they can't force their kid to the top of the pile.

Open source is the only way forward. Closed source code, systems, processes are just that "mysterious" and prone to extreme prejudice. The area where we work we know the amount of leeway our programmers have and the dangers and havoc they can cause.

I had quoted the example of Schumacher and Benetton when "cheat code" in the car's programming may have given S an advantage.

I totally forgot about the Postoffice Scandal with Fujitsu.

The payment suggested was not to "someone" at the Council. It was to the Council.

Years ago a friend had come over and had to be treated for Malaria at the Hospital next to Euston. The friend could more than afford to pay for the emergency treatment which saved him, and the Hospital had no way to accept payment.

I think best we end this thread.

As a goodbye, I urge you all to think of the Postoffice Fujitsu scandal that took place. That would not have happened if they would have open sourced the code, I can say that with 100% conviction, anyone on this thread who is a programmer can comment on this.

And this is creeping in all aspects of life, England is a micro entity for a lot of such systems testing.

Taking to the streets to protest "Open source all processes" may yield greater good to society. Just that this does not sound s e x y.

Thank you again to all who helped, gave clear dates, gave pointers.

Long may live Mumsnet.

Thank you.

This has got to be one of the oddest threads I have read recently.

Emergency treatment isn't chargeable. It's available on the NHS to anybody from anywhere.

Had it been non emergency treatment, that would have been chargeable and payment would have been levied. Of course, if you're saying that like your current 'friends', they actually committed fraud, all I can say is that you may need to choose your friends more carefully in future.

I think equating the Post Office scandal with an AI filter preventing a privately educated child from applying to a scheme they’re not really entitled to is not really comparing apples to apples. I suspect many people posting on MN know quite a lot about AI, algorithms and programming and can still find this proposal quite morally upsetting.

I spend a lot of my time supporting parents desperate to access education for their children who are closed out by a lack of SEN provision, often who haven’t attended school for months or years, and whose futures are bleak. They can’t afford lawyers and are suffering at the end of a broken system with no money. So I’m not hugely sympathetic to the prospect of parents who drop a few grand on legal fees at the mere suggestion they may not get to do whatever they want in a system they are looking to play to add to their already substantial advantage.

Poor kid

Luckily they have evidenced the whole thing on here. Let's hope they were being honest about it being Harrow Council and that someone either report this to them or they pick up on it.
For once, I sort of hope the daily fail picks up on this although I am also slightly concerned that this whole thread is a deliberate attempt by far right groups to try to turn sensible people against immigration? It just feels a bit too antagonistic?

I feel sorry for this "kid"...it feels like they are under enormous pressure!

Along with the lady who couldn’t understand why her employer wouldn’t let her cut her hours by 60%.

It does beg the question though, that if privately sat GCSEs bar you from the CS internship on the grounds that the applicant isn't working class. What happens re. UK home schooled children who pay to sit their exams? Is home school deemed not working class?

I think the issue, such as it is, is a filter on children with iGCSEs, which are almost exclusively sat in private rather than state schools. So if a home educated child sat GCSEs it would be no issue.

Privately sat GCSEs DONT bar you from the CS Internship scheme though. That isn’t how they measure lower socio-economic status. Whatever OP thinks.

The OP has never said what the mysterious scheme/course/institution is. The set up doesn’t really suggest a family desperate to get their child into the public sector at junior management level to me.

I've no skin in this game, but assumed the OP had researched this. Had a quick look myself and can't actually see what their criteria are yet. But was just curious as to how it would work.

Sounds more like the top financial institutions or tech/sciences to me. Something where an average high achiever's parents would think it worthwhile to finagle them onto a programme meant to address structural inequalities by throwing yet more money at it to appear to be disadvantaged and nudge out somebody for whom the scheme is actually meant to assist.

You won't find the OP's fantasy criteria listed anywhere. It's apparently a top secret algorithm that only the child's parents know about.

It’s a very special scheme for which selection is done entirely by AI based on an academic transcript apparently.