Advice on dispute with a private school please

[R2FU]

Hi, hoping someone suitably qualified out there can guide me. To summarise a long story - when my daughter was starting school we applied for a place at our preferred local state school but weren't sure of being in the catchment area so as a fallback applied to the local private school. The private school offered my daughter a place which we accepted and paid a deposit, in full knowledge that if we got the place we wanted at the state school we'd lose the deposit we'd paid with the private school. No argument with that, that was the price of hedging our bets. Bottom line, we got a place at the state school and I wrote off the deposit with the private school. All good.

Except it wasn't! In accepting the place at the private school I didn't pay enough attention to the many pages of detailed terms and conditions and missed letting them know in the required timescales (one term's notice) that my daughter wouldn't be attending. So they are now coming after me for the balance of a term's fees, plus interest at 1.5% per month. Which is what is stated in their Ts & Cs that without really paying proper attention I signed up to up-front.

I fully accept I'm not squeaky clean here - I did miss the date they had set and they tell me the place did not subsequently get filled that term (no reason to think they'd go to the trouble of lying about that). So I'm prepared to come to some arrangement.

But my questions are these:

Is it correct that regardless of what of what their terms and conditions say, they are only entitled to seek to recover actual costs they've incurred?
If so does a full terms fees for educational services we did not receive plus a punitive rate of interest reflect their real costs or are we into the realms of them looking to levy a penalty, which I'm told they are not legally entitled to do?

As it stands I have been served with a claim by the school's solicitors and things are currently on track to go to small claims court unless I work something out.

Basically, I'm not blameless here, and as you can hopefully see I am looking to reach some compromise (even if it is just them waiving the several hundred pounds of interest they're claiming) and am trying to find an angle to come from.

Thanks in advance for any help or guidance anyone can offer as to how I can approach this.

[SiH]

R2FU said:

Hi, hoping someone suitably qualified out there can guide me. To summarise a long story - when my daughter was starting school we applied for a place at our preferred local state school but weren't sure of being in the catchment area so as a fallback applied to the local private school. The private school offered my daughter a place which we accepted and paid a deposit, in full knowledge that if we got the place we wanted at the state school we'd lose the deposit we'd paid with the private school. No argument with that, that was the price of hedging our bets. Bottom line, we got a place at the state school and I wrote off the deposit with the private school. All good.

Except it wasn't! In accepting the place at the private school I didn't pay enough attention to the many pages of detailed terms and conditions and missed letting them know in the required timescales (one term's notice) that my daughter wouldn't be attending. So they are now coming after me for the balance of a term's fees, plus interest at 1.5% per month. Which is what is stated in their Ts & Cs that without really paying proper attention I signed up to up-front.

I fully accept I'm not squeaky clean here - I did miss the date they had set and they tell me the place did not subsequently get filled that term (no reason to think they'd go to the trouble of lying about that). So I'm prepared to come to some arrangement.

But my questions are these:

Is it correct that regardless of what of what their terms and conditions say, they are only entitled to seek to recover actual costs they've incurred?
If so does a full terms fees for educational services we did not receive plus a punitive rate of interest reflect their real costs or are we into the realms of them looking to levy a penalty, which I'm told they are not legally entitled to do?

As it stands I have been served with a claim by the school's solicitors and things are currently on track to go to small claims court unless I work something out.

Basically, I'm not blameless here, and as you can hopefully see I am looking to reach some compromise (even if it is just them waiving the several hundred pounds of interest they're claiming) and am trying to find an angle to come from.

Thanks in advance for any help or guidance anyone can offer as to how I can approach this.

You've admitted to not paying attention to the terms and conditions of a contract that you happily signed. The school did not fill the place (I assume because your name was on the list?) once you had informed them of your intent not to attend. Given the relatively low likelihood that they'll find someone else during the course of the school year wouldn't it be reasonable to therefore assume that as a result of your inattention the school could lose the income that they might otherwise have received from the two remaining terms of the school year. As such these 'actual costs' that the school has lost could be the fees for a pupil for two terms. Sounds like they're doing you a favour by sticking to their side of the bargain and only requesting the single term's fees that their contract states. Why should they 'waive the interest'? I'm sure you'd be pretty upset if someone who owed you money, either personally or as part of a business arrangement, failed to cough up and started to dig their heels in.
I appreciate you're holding your hands up on this one and that's very noble but at the end of the day you're going to have to pay up and write it down to experience.

[anonymous-user]

The claim is not for "costs", but for the loss that the school has incurred. The school's running costs will not be reduced by the absence of one pupil, and so a term's fees are a reasonable estimate of the loss incurred. It is standard for a private school to stipulate for a term's notice to terminate the contract. You are bang to rights, OP. Pay up.

[Centurion07]

SiH said:

R2FU said:

Hi, hoping someone suitably qualified out there can guide me. To summarise a long story - when my daughter was starting school we applied for a place at our preferred local state school but weren't sure of being in the catchment area so as a fallback applied to the local private school. The private school offered my daughter a place which we accepted and paid a deposit, in full knowledge that if we got the place we wanted at the state school we'd lose the deposit we'd paid with the private school. No argument with that, that was the price of hedging our bets. Bottom line, we got a place at the state school and I wrote off the deposit with the private school. All good.

Except it wasn't! In accepting the place at the private school I didn't pay enough attention to the many pages of detailed terms and conditions and missed letting them know in the required timescales (one term's notice) that my daughter wouldn't be attending. So they are now coming after me for the balance of a term's fees, plus interest at 1.5% per month. Which is what is stated in their Ts & Cs that without really paying proper attention I signed up to up-front.

I fully accept I'm not squeaky clean here - I did miss the date they had set and they tell me the place did not subsequently get filled that term (no reason to think they'd go to the trouble of lying about that). So I'm prepared to come to some arrangement.

But my questions are these:

Is it correct that regardless of what of what their terms and conditions say, they are only entitled to seek to recover actual costs they've incurred?
If so does a full terms fees for educational services we did not receive plus a punitive rate of interest reflect their real costs or are we into the realms of them looking to levy a penalty, which I'm told they are not legally entitled to do?

As it stands I have been served with a claim by the school's solicitors and things are currently on track to go to small claims court unless I work something out.

Basically, I'm not blameless here, and as you can hopefully see I am looking to reach some compromise (even if it is just them waiving the several hundred pounds of interest they're claiming) and am trying to find an angle to come from.

Thanks in advance for any help or guidance anyone can offer as to how I can approach this.

You've admitted to not paying attention to the terms and conditions of a contract that you happily signed. The school did not fill the place (I assume because your name was on the list?) once you had informed them of your intent not to attend. Given the relatively low likelihood that they'll find someone else during the course of the school year wouldn't it be reasonable to therefore assume that as a result of your inattention the school could lose the income that they might otherwise have received from the two remaining terms of the school year. As such these 'actual costs' that the school has lost could be the fees for a pupil for two terms. Sounds like they're doing you a favour by sticking to their side of the bargain and only requesting the single term's fees that their contract states. Why should they 'waive the interest'? I'm sure you'd be pretty upset if someone who owed you money, either personally or as part of a business arrangement, failed to cough up and started to dig their heels in.
I appreciate you're holding your hands up on this one and that's very noble but at the end of the day you're going to have to pay up and write it down to experience.

IANAL but 1.5% PER MONTH seems a bit high, assuming their profit is already built into their fees.

Secondly, if the place didn't get filled, they can't have had much of a waiting list so have they really lost out on those other two term's fees?

[anonymous-user]

There you go, OP, some advice from a non lawyer that may accord with what you want to hear, so perhaps you will follow that advice. Or, having asked for advice from someone "suitably qualified", you might not. I am not sure what "suitably qualified" means. In PH, this may mean "able to tell me something that I want to hear", but in the real world I am listed in one of the main legal professional directories as a leading practitioner in education law. Take yer pick! IAALBIANYL, and so on.

[JustinP1]

R2FU said:

missed letting them know in the required timescales (one term's notice) that my daughter wouldn't be attending

When I saw the title of this thread, I hoped it would be this exact query...

A few years back my Mum called me, very upset as she got a threatening letter from my younger sister's private sixth form, and asked me to help.

In short, she gave 8 weeks notice that my sister would not be continuing to attend. Their notice terms were also 'a term's notice'.

So, I spoke to the Bursar about it, and got them to explain their position. Fair enough, they need notice, but, they need to be clear with the people they contract with.

How long is 'a term'? They are different lengths. It transpired that it was their policy to interpret that 'a term' meant that it was the whole term before the term in question, plus the additional holiday in between.

Of course, if you wish to enforce that, you need to say so, clearly. For example, to make that contract clear, they could say:

"The minimum notice period is the first day of the term preceding the term which will not be attended". Or, to be even more clear, they could simply state the three dates.

Remembering the contract that I looked over, 'a term's notice' clearly means notice to end a current period of enrolment. I'm not sure how clearly you could transpose that if you have not yet started school.

In the end, I wrote to the firm of solicitors, who didn't know what they were talking about with consumer law, especially the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts regs. I wrote back to them, informing them of the law, and the deficient paperwork, and warning that we would not pay and were willing to defend that position in court.

Never heard from them since.

[Centurion07]

Breadvan72 said:

There you go, OP, some advice from a non lawyer that may accord with what you want to hear, so perhaps you will follow that advice. Or, having asked for advice from someone "suitably qualified", you might not. I am not sure what "suitably qualified" means. In PH, this may mean "able to tell me something that I want to hear", but in the real world I am listed in one of the main legal professional directories as a leading practitioner in education law. Take yer pick! IAALBIANYL, and so on.

Calm down poppet, did I actually offer any advice? Did I claim to be a lawyer? Or did I specifically state that I wasn't? Perhaps I was just mentioning a couple of points that someone more qualified may have been able to expand upon? Hmmm?

[anonymous-user]

Yeah, yeah, no one ever offers advice here, do they? Anyway, as amateur hour has started earlier than usual today, I will go off and post nonsense about rusty cars. OP, good luck with the pub fun!

[Centurion07]

Breadvan72 said:

Yeah, yeah, no one ever offers advice here, do they?

Well I certainly wasn't!

[AyBee]

Centurion07 said:

IANAL but 1.5% PER MONTH seems a bit high, assuming their profit is already built into their fees.

Secondly, if the place didn't get filled, they can't have had much of a waiting list so have they really lost out on those other two term's fees?

Sounds me like they're only after 1 term and not 3 which seems fair enough. If they knew your plan and didn't make you aware that you'd be liable for deposit plus 1 term (since you couldn't give 1 term notice at the point you made the deposit), I'd definitely feel hard done by, but at the same time, you should have read the Ts&Cs. You could try bargaining but I'm not sure you'll get anywhere.

[Vaud]

One tack to take might be to offer a reduced amount as a charitable gift, they could then claim gift aid?

Net amount would be the same to them but you would pay less.

Just a thought.

[JustinP1]

There's plenty of angles here to at very least get them on the back foot and negotiate, if not leave it at the deposit.

There's case law surrounding the notice period, and also specifically around the UTCCRs and notice periods.

From my experience, the private school relied on very poorly drafted terms and simply left it to the solicitors to 'do their best', and when I started asking serious questions about how they came up with their pre-estimate of loss and their mitigation they ran a mile.

OP, do you have a copy of the contract to scan/email?

[SiH]

Breadvan72 said:

The claim is not for "costs", but for the loss that the school has incurred. The school's running costs will not be reduced by the absence of one pupil, and so a term's fees are a reasonable estimate of the loss incurred. It is standard for a private school to stipulate for a term's notice to terminate the contract. You are bang to rights, OP. Pay up.

OP, PistonHeads has a membership list which seemingly extends into the bajillions and yet I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of members whose advice I would accept (almost entirely) without question. BV72 is absolutely on that list as he knows his onions and will give a measured response in a clear manner. If I were in your shoes I would be inclined to follow his advice to pay up and be done with the matter rather than fight out a likely futile and protracted battle.

Although IANAL and this is just the internet where it would appear that anything goes I would bet the farm on advice being (freely) given by BV72 as being correct and the ultimate outcome being aligned to what he says.

Edited to say that I fully appreciate that the OP has been round these parts longer than me and so has probably met PetrolTed and also knows what was down those Nazi tunnels but I'm also exercising my internet ordained right to pontificate on matters in which I have absolutely no expertise...

Edited by SiH on Thursday 17th September 17:01

[pork911]

OP, just pay it. As for the interest, just pay that as well.

You went into it knowing the private school was only ever a back up and didn't bother to assess the downside.

Strange you should post a thread now you've been 'served', did you just think it would go away after their earlier letters?


Anyway, there's a lesson here for your child on decision making.

[JustinP1]

SiH said:

Although IANAL and this is just the internet where it would appear that anything goes I would bet the farm on advice being (freely) given by BV72 as being correct and the ultimate outcome being aligned to what he says.

From my actual story of how this situation plays out, if I had posted it here and BV would have said that, my Mum would have been wrongly £6000 poorer.

You may bet the farm on what BV says, and I would if I had informed him of the full facts of a situation, however, I am sure that BV would not bet his farm on how a contract should be lawfully interpreted without having sight of what the contract actually says.

There are generalisations, but with contracts the devil is in the detail, and then, especially in the case of consumer contracts the contract is governed by statute.

Edited by JustinP1 on Thursday 17th September 17:11

[SiH]

JustinP1 said:

From my actual story of how this situation plays out, if I had posted it here and BV would have said that, my Mum would have been wrongly £6000 poorer.

You may bet the farm on what BV says, however, I am sure that BV would not bet his farm on how a contract should be lawfully interpreted without having sight of what the contract actually says.

There are generalisations, but with contracts the devil is in the detail.

Indeed Justin and I wanted to choose my words carefully, hence my statement about being 'inclined to pay' rather than 'would pay'. If I were really in this situation and the sum of money at stake was similar to that which you mention then I would be taking formal legal advice in the first instance. I'd be likely to stick a post on here too, but only while waiting for my appointed solicitor to return from the golf club, yacht club, massage parlour or wherever it is that these legal types like to spend their time.

[ging84]

When my parents were in a similar situation, they ended up paying half. It was an awful lot less than £6k though, even if you did adjust for 20 years of inflation.

[JustinP1]

I'd be pushing for less than that.

Whilst I dislike that people enter contracts without reading them, I despise companies with unclear terms - especially when they want thousands of pounds for breach - and who wrongly threaten to obtain payment.

If the solicitor has issued a claim suggesting an 18% per annum charge for late payment of a consumer debt (and especially a damages figure) is lawful, then they are either knowingly bullying and leveraging through costs racking up, or they don't know the law.

Edited by JustinP1 on Thursday 17th September 18:54

[Vixpy1]

Its a fairly standard thing tbh, you have potentially cost the school a terms fee's as they may not be able to fill the place in time so i think its fair you pay. Its certainly in the terms and conditions I've seen.

On a slight tangent..

I'm not saying the OP did this because i don't know the circumstances, but it pisses me off when wealthy familes try to get their children into the top state schools, usually by buying expensive houses nearby, denying a child from a less affluant background a place at a good school when they can quite easily afford a good private school but want to spend all their money on champagne, cocaine and holidays in the Bahamas.

[Pagey]

OP's daughter starting school....

So Private Primary School (reception Year)

I would hazard a guess that costs are circa £1500 - £2k per term



What area of South East OP ?
Not that it's relevant. Just my idle curiosity