Deadlines for Independent schools earlier than CAF?

[persereving18]

I have bumped up the QE results breakdown thread so you can read through the 32 pages of posts.

You can check out your QE score and where it would leave you on allocation day for the past five years so you can have a clear idea of what has happened.

If you would choose QE if you got a place on 1st March then you may well be pretty much home and dry already.

The data shows that 231 and above has got in on allocation day every year for the past five years. DG

Thank you. You have been very helpful since the start. Fingers crossed here. Will let you know by 1st March.

[Amber]

Thank you all for your invaluable advice. I only received a short email from MT with a brief acceptance. Full details are to be sent in the post. Habs however, sent their post early. DS qualified for academic scholarship and partial bursary so I assume that is why they have made the 1st of March noon deadline. Again I stress it is definitely 12noon ( they have put this in bold). This is my first child going to secondary so I am just trying to be tactful.
QE I am very keen on...but who knows what could happen this year. I think I will contact the schools and request atleast a further 24hrs!

Can someone enlighten me as to why a school would do this unless they were trying to pressurise someone into accepting? What does it matter to the school if you accept by 12 noon or by sometime the following day? They clearly know exactly what they are doing so why heap on the pressure like this? It seems truly awful to me but perhaps someone has an explanation which shows them up in a better light?

[Choco]

It is unacceptable behaviour by the schools and I wouldn't try to condone it, but I think I might be able to say something about why they feel they need to do it.

In some areas of London, the no of independent schools and state grammar possibilities mean that children enter for numerous schools. It is almost impossible for schools to know how many of the candidates are first choice people or how many will accept. This creates massive problems for them, because 2 difficulties can arise. One is that they over offer and end up with too many children and need to run a bulge class, which basically they don't have physical space for, and two, that they under offer and don't get enough children, so their fee income is insufficient. It is very hard to get it spot on.....so part of their way to handle this uncertainty is to do with the no.s offered, use of deadlines and waiting lists, to try to regain some control over it all.

We know that City last year used exploding offers. This was because children coming to them often have many choices because of where they are geographically. They chose to over offer and make it clear that when enough people had accepted to make them full, the other offers exploded and were no longer valid. This happened earlier than they imagined - before their offer holders open day and before the state school offer day. Understandably, it caused a lot of outrage, but it did mean they filled up and had more certainty of numbers. It does seem unfair and is unfair to set a deadline before people have all of their offers. It's an attempt to whittle out those who were never seriously considering the offer, because they will turn it down more quickly than otherwise. I guess they expect that some will accept who later withdraw after a preferable offer arrives, but these numbers will be minimised by the hefty deposit they have to pay and possibly a term of fees. When these people do pull out, the school has that money as a hit of compensation and then can go to the wait list if necessary - but hopefully not for too many. And they don't like going to wait list, because there is a lot of uncertainty there and many people on the WL won't actually accept an offer because by then they have accepted another that they are happy with, or don't want to lose the deposit from.....so schools often have to go quite far down the wait list, which means to less able students, so they would prefer not to have to do this.

It strikes me as particularly odd to set a deadline as the exact day of the state school offer, if a few hours before. I wonder if they actually expect people to ask for a brief extension and expect to give it, but know then they they will have answers the following day, rather than perhaps 4 or 5 days later. They will then be ready to go to their wait list earlier if they need to, and getting to the wait list before other schools have set their deadlines makes it much more possible to get people to say yes to the offer, because they haven't paid deposits etc. The very tight deadline forces people with offers to make the decision before the deadline, rather than doing what some people do and taking weeks about it and really only starting to think about it and look to visit once the state school offers come in. These schools in areas of lots of schools need it sorted sooner rather than later, because the sooner it is, the more likely they are to have the right numbers and the better candidates.

I'm not justifying the practice though. I think people should be given until at least the day after to decide. Most schools will give 4 or 5 days. These tight deadlines still mean people need to be fairly clear what they will do if they get all offers, before they actually arrive.

In Ops position, I would do as she says and ask for 24 hours. I'm sure she will get it and the school won't be surprised by the request at all. It will still force her to make a speedy decision and the school will know where they are, but she will be in receipt of full info when making that choice, which is of course not unreasonable.

As others have said, Op must have a fairly good idea of what the choice will be if all the offers come in. If you know your 11+ score, the liklihood of places for many is pretty clear, especially the very high scorers, so actually, it is possible to make a provisional decision now. Of course if the offers turn out to be different to expected, that can be revised, but most people should be able to say what they will do - lots of people find this decision making very hard and we know they dpfind turning down offers very hard too, which is why people clog up lists and slow down waiting lists. Being forced to get on and decide isn't bad in itself and actually benefits the whole system....as long as you do have a chance to make final decisions in receipt of exempt of all the info.

How close are you OP to deciding? How hard a choice is it for you and will you find it very hard to say it out loud or to do the turning down of other great offers? I understand it is hard.

[Sla212]

Presumably because if the OP doesn't want the scholarship AND bursary that has very generously been offered, there are other people waiting who would love to be in receipt of such an offer? And the school may then lose candidates that they'd like to have at their school in September. What about consideration for those on the waiting list at the school, scholarship & otherwise?

I don't think it seems unfair at all. By March 1 the OP will have had over 3 weeks to consider the amount offered & the school in question....and this for a school where she didn't like the HABS boys she saw at the interview & where she described the entire school as fluffy! She has also known her QE score for months & has said on here that it's a "very good" score whilst not actually stating what it is....thanks to the many posts on the topic on this forum she will have a very good idea if she has a place there or not.

It's not as though she's been given 48 hours & then the offer is withdrawn.

We were offered a scholarship & the school phoned me the same day to check I had received the letter. I didn't feel any pressure whatsoever, at no point during this conversation did they ask what my decision was going to be. We also had a definite selective grammar place by this point....I took time deciding & kept in touch by email with the Admissions dept until I had 100% made my decision. Of course the school in question want you to say yes, they wouldn't have offered the scholarship otherwise. And bearing in mind the amount of scholarship/bursary offers made (not that many) & the sums of money involved (a lot), I think they are entitled to have a deadline. Most people do know, deep down, what their first choice school is.

It sounds to me as though, regardless of the scholarship/bursary the OP still hasn't chosen between QE & HABS....she is still posting about that somewhere else on here. The HABS offer is possibly making it more difficult. A decision will have to be made though, that is what deadlines are for. And if you were that family on the HABS scholarship/bursary waiting list....how would you feel? Particularly if the choice was always going to be QE anyway?


Bottom line - you like HABS enough & the money offered is sufficient for you to send your child there OR you really want QE & that's the one you know you will say yes to, if it's offered - on March 1. Otherwise what have you been thinking about all these months??!!

In the first instance, she should contact HABS admissions to begin a dialogue, if she hasn't done so already.

[Amber]

Thank you for that full explanation. I can see now what is happening. And I can see also why they squeeze the bursary offer holders hardest - they are the ones more likely not to be able to take the financial hit of holding multiple offers and also potentially the ones most likely to run to the state sector if the fees look too high. I am not sure about the business of offering scholarships to others though - I thought they didn't do that?

And yes in the case of this particular OP I got the impression that QE was the top choice and that there was a feeling of a dead cert place...and was it not that the independent exams were 'too easy'; and the school environment 'fluffy' as you say, Sla212, so there was a question of unsuitability there too?

I do think it is unfair still though, all that notwithstanding. There are cases where people don't expect to pass for grammar and then do, which would throw everything up in the air; and even if one is totally sure about a school, it is understandable if a last minute 'what if?' kind of wobble set in, at least needing an overnight think. Still, to be honest I think the entire system of secondary school allocation is unfair; selective and independent schools are unfair and privilege the wealthy; so one more layer of unfairness probably isn't all that shocking!

[Choco]

Very fair points Sla22.

Choices do have to be made and should be made. Wallowing in offers and offers that you can be pretty certain are coming is only okay for a short time, because both schools and other children can't move forward until you make your choices. Tight deadlines are needed and while no one should have to make their choice until all the offers are in their hand, decisions based on various possible outcomes can certainly be made, and final choices made and reported almost immedediately. And yes, people often do know their top choice all along, but sometimes seem to get some kind of perverse enjoyment from the 'struggle' to choose and knowing they have a range of fantastic options. It's an enjoyment that can't be indulged for long at all, because other children and schools can't move forward until choices are made, and every day and week delayed (here by people who hold both a state and independent offer for weeks or months on end) has impacts on both school and other children - schools find that when they are finally able to offer to another child on a WL, the other child says 'no' because they have emotionally committed or financially committed to another school. The window on time for people making choices which don't get skewed by other factors such as choices already made, is very small, so the choices need to be made within the allotted wimdows,mor the good of all.

[Daogroupie]

St Albans boys send out a form with the waiting list information that must be returned before your waiting list place is activated.

It asks the parent to confirm that they do wish to be on the waiting list and do wish to be offered any place that comes up.

This is very sensible as it gets rid of the parents who are just chalking up offers and have no real intention of taking a place at the school.

I am in awe of the private schools having to deal with this every year. How do they know who is going to actually take the place when so many parents sit their students for so many schools? Some have a backup for the backup! No wonder it sometimes goes wrong and they end up having to put on an extra class as St Albans girls did last year or having to phone up students who were not invited to interview and ask them to come in for interview the next day as NLCS did both last year and this year. DG

[shootmenow]

NLCS has never done that. EVER. I corrected you last year after you posted this.

[shootmenow]

How do I know? I'm at the interviews.

[ToadMum]

St Albans boys send out a form with the waiting list information that must be returned before your waiting list place is activated.

It asks the parent to confirm that they do wish to be on the waiting list and do wish to be offered any place that comes up.

This is very sensible as it gets rid of the parents who are just chalking up offers and have no real intention of taking a place at the school.

I am in awe of the private schools having to deal with this every year. How do they know who is going to actually take the place when so many parents sit their students for so many schools? Some have a backup for the backup! No wonder it sometimes goes wrong and they end up having to put on an extra class as St Albans girls did last year or having to phone up students who were not invited to interview and ask them to come in for interview the next day as NLCS did both last year and this year. DG

There must still be forum members who can remember back to before the state schools' Coordinated Admissions Scheme was brought in - when the system for offering state school places was very much the same. Certainly, when we were applying for primary places for DS1 (started school April 2002) and DD (September 2005), the system worked differently here, depending on whether the school you were sky ng for was your catchment school or not. So with each of them - OOC school we wanted and catchment (and in DS1's case, another local OOC school we preferred to our 'desirable' catchment one), we received multiple outcome letters, in both cases, all offers of a place.

For DD, I was round at the catchment school the day I got the letter, turning the place down - i know that it was re-offered and accepted within half an hour. With DS1, I had to ask the LEA for an extension on the 14 day decision window, as we didn't get the letters offering our first preference and our catchment school until we got in from work on the last day of the spring term. Our catchment school hadn't allowed us to look round by that point, as DS1 wasn't yet 4 (June birthday), but it seemed churlish to turn the place down without at least having another go. So in the end, we held two places for a week longer than strictly necessary, but declined the catchment place and formally accepted our preferred place as we got home from our visit.

The offer of a place at the third school turned up after a month, so obviously we must have been mm a wait list initially.

Some people still think the Coordinated Admissions Scheme is evil and cannot understand why we can't in back to the home old days of seeing how many state school places they can collect before they have to make a decision .