Will the place be taken away?

[Zingy123]

My friend lives very near to a very good school. Her son has got a place there for this September.Since she applied her husband has left her. She cannot afford the house on her own. It eventually sold and she moved this week. She has moved in with a relative who lives about 4 miles away.

The catchment is usually 1.5 miles maximum. Will they take the place away or will he be able to keep his place? She is going to notify the school today her change of address.

She had lived in her previous house for 10+ years and had no intention of moving when she applied. Her husband dropped the bombshell he had been having an affair for years and left her. He gave up his job so she can't get any money from him.

[prh47bridge]

They cannot take the place away simply because she has moved further away from the school. They could withdraw the offer if they though the original application was fraudulent but as she lived there for over 10 years that isn't going to happen either.

And her husband is an idiot if he thinks giving up his job means she can't get any money from him. Both the CSA and the courts will regard that as deliberate deprivation of income and will work on the basis that his income hasn't changed. In the CSA's case your friend will need to let them assess on his current income then apply for a variation.

[QueenOfToast]

I don't want to worry you but I think that there is a chance that the school could withdraw the place if they no longer meets the distance criteria that they applied under.

IME it depends how oversubscribed the school is and what precedents have been set in previous years.

When I worked in an education support role, a very oversubscribed part-grammar school told me to advise a family who were being evicted from their property that if they were unable to move somewhere that was at least as close to the school as the address that they applied from then their place would be withdrawn. (Luckily, they moved even closer to the school so it worked out OK for them.)

Another family, where the parents were divorcing, ended up continuing to live together in the marital home until their child had completed Year 7 because the school told them that if they left the catchment area before the end of Year 7 then they would withdraw the place.

I don't know what the legal position of the schools would be if they had tried to withdraw those places or indeed if they would in reality withdraw them when faced with difficult individual circumstances. However, these schools are VASTLY oversubscribed part-grammar schools and they have to be really, really tight on their admissions rules.

I think that the only thing your friend can do is to be totally honest with the school about her circumstances. I hope it works out OK.

[prh47bridge]

QueenOfToast is wrong. There is no chance whatsoever that they will withdraw the place. They are not allowed to withdraw an offer just because you have moved further away from the school. It has been that way for at least 5 years. If the grammar school behaved as described by QueenOfToast today they would be in breach of the Admissions Code and would be told to reinstate the place if they had withdrawn it.

Under the Admissions Code the only circumstances in which an offer can be withdrawn are:

• the offer was made in error
  
• the application was fraudulent
  
• the parent has not accepted the offer in a reasonable time
  

None of those applies in this case so you are safe. They cannot take the place away from you. In the unlikely event that they attempt to do so point them at paragraph 2.12 of the Admissions Code.

[Zingy123]

Thank you for the advice. I will pass the information onto her.

[admission]

Zingy PRH is correct. If the situation is as described then they should not loose the place. It is all about dates and the relevant date for a secondary school application would have been where were they living on the last date of on-time applications (probably 31st October) and when the places were allocated, which was 1st March. As long as they had not moved before then, then any attempt to remove the place would be considered incorrect.

[QueenOfToast]

OK. Sorry for causing extra anxiety.

Looking at the Code - in the cases I mentioned, the school was arguing that the parents knew BEFORE 1 March that they were (a) likely to be evicted and in case (b) that their marriage had broken down and they would separate. So I guess the school would have been arguing that their applications were fraudulent because they knew that they wouldn't be staying at those addresses for long.

[prh47bridge]

Interesting approach but those arguments don't hold up. A fraudulent application is where the parent moves close to the school on a temporary basis in order to get a place. Using your current address and then being forced to move due to eviction or marriage breakdown is not fraudulent. If this school still thinks it is they need a reality check. It is not their place to dictate where parents live, still less to effectively force estranged parents to continue to live together.

[Startail]

If she just forgets to change her address school probably won't know anyway.

[prh47bridge]

I wouldn't do that. That kind of behaviour can cause problems and may lead them to suspect fraud.

[Zingy123]

Thanks everyone. She called the school who asked her to call the LEA and they said all is ok. Think she might have problems when it comes to getting her daughter in in a few years time. Hopefully she can move closer by then.