Powerful parents 'threatening to sue private schools David Smellie, head of the schools group at the law firm Farrer & Co, said disputes with parents could be "very emotionally draining" for heads. "There are a lot of alpha males and alpha females amongst the parent bodies," he said. They're very intelligent, they've been very successful, and they don't like not succeeding. They particularly don't like it when it relates to their children; that really gets their goat. In those circumstances, when they've got financial resources, they can put the school to an enormous amount of aggravation. In an interview for the book, Mr Smellie told how some heads were receiving five or six "unpleasant emails a day" from angry parents. "Twenty years ago, a head could quite safely expel a pupil with no realistic expectation of an appeal, of a solicitor's letter," he said. Now, at the very least, for every 10 pupils you expel, you will probably get at least one solicitor's letter and two or three appeals. The book said that schools sometimes "settle carefully" in the face of "possibly protracted, expensive litigation, particularly from overseas billionaires and oligarchs with infinite resources, who are used to getting their way, whatever the cost." It follows the publication of figures showing the number of pupils recruited by independent schools from overseas was up 1.4 per cent to a total of 25,900, last year, with new entrants from Russia increasing by 27 per cent, Nigeria by 16 per cent and China by five per cent. Recent examples of legal action include two unnamed parents who sued a prestigious London school for £50,000, claiming teachers backtracked on a deal to give their children good references after they were withdrawn from the institution. Parents also sued a school in Merseyside amid claims its decision to exclude their 17-year-old son for dealing cannabis was "unreasonable, unjustified and disproportionate." The book by Dominic Carman - based on interviews with 32 top heads - suggested other schools feared litigation. Cynthia Hall, who retired as headmistress of Wycombe Abbey School, Buckinghamshire, in the summer, said: "Because some of our parents are quite powerful, they will sometimes want very individual concessions to be made for their daughter, which frankly would not be fair to other girls... At Wycombe, I have felt it very important to use various tools to support what I feel is right in the face of sometimes quite powerful parents: having very firm and clear policies and having had those very carefully lawyered." Joe Spence, the master of Dulwich College, south London, said the "death of the deferential parent" happened in the 90s, adding that there were now "extraordinary demands made on teachers." Stephen Wright, who led Merchant Taylors', north west London, until last month, joked that parents at his old school "threaten you with violence; here, they threaten you with litigation." Heads admitted to "filtering out" children whose parents appeared overly pushy or unable to sign up to the ethos of the school. Mr Wright added: "I don't want... parents who see this school as a route to getting their son into Oxford, Cambridge, UCL or Imperial. We filter them out because our message is so clear and has been for the past 30 years: we want boys coming here for the experience, not just to pass exams. Ralph Townsend, headmaster of Winchester College, said: "Part of my job is to put off the people who are never going to understand or appreciate the school's core values and ethos."