When an Employee Says Their Child Needs Private School
When an employee asks for private school as an exception to policy, the fairest answer comes from looking at the individual child: their age, their languages, where they’re moving and where they’ll go home to. Sometimes private school is truly necessary, and sometimes a smaller, targeted kind of support meets the need better.
Many companies write their education policy around local schools. Children on assignment attend the local system, and the company covers private or international school only when it’s genuinely needed. That’s a reasonable position. It also means that sooner or later, an employee will come to HR or Global Mobility and say, “My child needs private school.”
The request is usually sincere. A parent may worry that their child will fall behind and won’t be on track when the family goes home. They may have heard that the local schools are weaker, or that the language of instruction will be too much for an older child. Sometimes they’re right. And because private and international school tuition can run to tens of thousands of dollars per child per year, each answer carries a real cost, for the family and for the company.
Why Exception Requests Are Hard to Decide Internally
As you’ve likely seen, the difficulty isn’t only the money. It’s consistency.
Requests that are decided one at a time, by whoever happens to receive them, can lead to colleagues comparing notes on who received what, and why. One employee’s request is approved because a manager knew the family’s situation; another’s is declined in a different region the following year. Neither decision may have been wrong, but together they’re hard to explain.
There’s also the matter of expertise. To judge whether a particular child needs private school, someone has to understand the local curriculum, how the child’s current schooling maps onto it, and what the child’s home system will expect of them on return. That’s a lot to ask of an HR generalist, and it isn’t a decision anyone on the team wants to make on instinct.
What a Child-by-Child Assessment Looks At
When a company asks Bennett to assess an exception request, we start with the family. We ask the question behind the request: why do they believe private school is necessary for this child? Then we look at the child as an individual.
- Age and stage: A six-year-old and a sixteen-year-old face very different risks from a change of system.
- Language: What language does the child speak at home and learn in now, and what language would they be taught in locally?
- The destination: What do the local schools actually offer at this child’s level, and how accessible are they to a newly arrived student?
- The return: Where is the family expected to go home to, and when? Two and a half years from now, what will the home system expect this child to know?
- Any additional needs: If a child has special education needs, the question becomes whether local schools can provide the support they require. Our SEN specialists can review the evaluations a family already has.
From there, we compare the realistic options against what the child needs, and we make a recommendation, with our reasoning set out so the company and the family can both follow it.
Sometimes the Answer Is Something Other Than Private School
One of the most useful things an assessment can do is look past the “yes or no” in the request.
We once assessed a request from a family who planned to return to their home country and felt private school was essential for that. When we compared the curriculum at the private school they preferred with the local public school, we found that neither offered the family’s home language. Private school wouldn’t have solved the problem they were worried about. What the child needed was home-language tutoring, so they could keep up with the language they’d be taught in when they went home. That recommendation cost the company far less than private school tuition, and it addressed the family’s actual concern.
Other assessments come back with a clear yes: for this child, at this age, in this location, private or international school is necessary. And sometimes the recommendation is split, with the local school as the base and targeted additions, such as tutoring in a home-country subject or college counseling for an older student.
Consistency Is Part of the Value
When every exception request goes to the same independent third party, the reasoning stays consistent across employees, locations and years. Families know their request was considered on its merits by people who know schools, and HR and Global Mobility teams aren’t put in the position of being the “good guy” for one family and the “bad guy” for another.
It also gives the company something it can explain. A recommendation that sets out the child’s situation, the options and the reasons for the conclusion is far easier to stand behind than a decision made quickly under pressure.
Bennett is never paid by schools, and our recommendations aren’t influenced by referral fees. We answer to your policy and to the student in question.
How Bennett Helps
We assess exception requests for companies that want a fair, consistent and expert answer, child by child. You can read more about our independent school assessments, including assessments of whole school systems and individual schools. If you’re reviewing how your policy handles exception requests in the first place, our education benefits policy consultations cover that topic, and our earlier piece on the public vs. private school assessment describes the service in more detail. For the wider question of when local schools are a realistic option, see Is the School “Sufficient”?
Have an Exception Request on Your Desk?
Tell us about the request and the family’s situation, and we’ll explain how an assessment would work for this child.
Talk to us about an exception request →
Bennett International Education Consultancy works directly with hundreds of families each year across the globe. We support families by helping them make informed decisions about the best-fit schools for their children; with our guidance, they secure placement in preschools, private day schools, public/state schools, boarding schools, colleges and universities, including schools with particular programs, such as special needs support.
