Is this admission fraud? AIBU to report it?

I live in a grammar school town. I know how frustating it is and depressing to see parents lose all their moral compass with their children picking up on it, actively playing along (these are young children so it often involves dragging their siblings into the scam) and learning the ropes. Then they go to school with my children and yeap that's right surprise surprise grammar schools have surprisingly distruptive and disturbed kids with very little community spirit because their parents doing things like this changes them. My eldest is just finishing up at one and there are times when we've wondered if it was worth it. Yes great results but at what cost. The sharp elbowed social climbing type of parents who actively involve their kids in these scams really do change the atmosphere and fabric of a school long term. If anything has turned me against grammar school it's been the rampant catchment area fraud. I've been lucky my children passed without being tutored intensively and we happen to live in the catchment where my children were going to school locally for a good few years before even considering the test. I have a neighbouring house that's a constant turn over of catchment fraud families and their children even go to school locally mid year for a few weeks for show, with uniforms etc and then disappear, children gone once a place is confirmed and the lights left on timers. These families don't live "just outside" the catchment but the other side of the country. We have a great community spirit having gone through covid and berevements together, we have christmas drinks and summer picnics, and hope one day that the house will get sold because for my very elderly neighbours their life here and their neighbours are their whole world now and there's something unsettling for the older generation who used to give my children ice creams or sticker books to have to avoid these families as it's all a sham.

You can take the 11+ transfer test for any school from anywhere. This right is enshrined in law by what's known as the Greenwich Judgment.

It's on parents to ensure that they or their DCs meet any other criteria which a particular school might chose to apply. Despite what some posters on this thread think, schools do have the right to set their own criteria, and one which is considered perfectly reasonable is that of distance from the school. Of course some schools chose not to use distance as a criterion; that too is considered reasonable.

How is it exactly like this?? Show your workings.

ETA do you just live to contradict people, or summat? Gah, have broken own pledge not to engage with you. Forget it.

no saying "kids called John/Jane" or "kids with a blue front door" get preference - now that would be arbitrary!

but it exactly is like this!

I might have it wrong, I thought super selectives were the sort of school you needed 100% or close to get in. I'm pretty sure the first thing was score but I was still surprised that you could take it in another country although I don't know why as I knew quite a few kids from HongKong got in at 13 or 14 and then stayed as paying guests with local families. I was told they came over a few years early to avoid overseas fees at university. Cheaper than boarding school perhaps? Or maybe boarding school doesn't count as living here.

It's all very complicated isn't it.

By super selective I meant schools that rank by score rather than distance (I might have used the description wrong!)

sorry-can't even recall what i said

No not super selective, the less prestigious grammar in our catchment area but a lovely school. They do select on score in the exam, as far as I remember distance only comes into it after score and siblings.

No not super selective, the less prestigious grammar in our catchment area but a lovely school. They do select on score in the exam, as far as I remember distance only comes into it after score and siblings.

No it wasn't a government job, wasn't even a British company.

That's thoroughly unnecessary @daleylama

And the fact remains, as I said upthread, that parents appealing against the application of these rules on the basis of their being unfair, or arbitrary, or different from other areas/schools, or any other term you care to apply DO NOT WIN. So ultimately the authorities (even up to and including legal authorities on rare occasions) back schools' rights to apply said rules.

People can complain about them all they like, but the case for whether they are reasonable has already been won and lost.

If you accept that schools admissions are governed by rules (rather than, say, us all showing up at the gate on day 1 with our kid for any school in the country that we fancy) then you must surely accept that some applications will be successful within those rules and some will not.

All the rules about preference in the event of oversubscription 'could' be different than they are (e.g. sibling preference/no sibling preference, church attendance required or not, staff kid preference or not, fixed catchment/nearest distance). All of the distinctions are administrative.

I don't really understand the introduction of the word 'arbitrary' - they are not arbitrary but criteria that are published in advance and which must be in accordance with the Admissions Code (i.e. no saying "kids called John/Jane" or "kids with a blue front door" get preference - now that would be arbitrary!)

I am simply challenging your claim that something being what you call an ‘arbitrary administrative rule’ makes it unimportant.

A rule can be arbitrary, administrative and vitally important - so its arbitrary administrative nature is not a reason that can be used to dismiss it just because you don’t like it.

I doubt it will be within the rules, most schools are wise to this and won't consider a rented address if they are also house owners.

lol well that would be a matter of life and death, which is also why it would be considered reckless driving which is a criminal offence. So comparable to reporting an arbitrary administrative offence? Nope.

Indeed. An object lesson in why parents need to understand the admissions criteria of any school they are applying to for their children.

Children are entitled to sit the 11+ transfer test for.any grammar school no matter where they live. If they pass and are awarded a place the super-selectives take the view that it is up to the parents to get their child to school; catchment-area grammars have additional distance criteria which have to be met. Every year you get parents saying 'but my super-bright DC scored x,.why hasn't he\she got a place?' And the answer is almost always 'you live too far from the school'.

Equally anything with a closing or ending date. Is it ok for there to be a closing date for eg an invoice, a job application, or a special offer, or should you be able to buy that item at the reduced price a week later, or apply for that job expecting to be interviewed on another date at your convenience? Or pay an invoice arbitrarily late?

Many aspects of our lives are regulated by ‘arbitrary administrative rules’.

Driving on the left, for example. It’s an arbitrary rule, and other countries have a different one. Would it be right to report someone driving on the wrong side of a major road?

Awful.

An excellent example of why people should mind their own business and not go around reporting their friends and neighbours for perceived transgressions of arbitrary administrative rules.

I think you are mistaking "fairness" with "consistency".
A rule can be both unfair and consistently applied.
A rule that says "if you rent and own this is automatically viewed as fraud" (which by the way is not even the general rule) would be arbitrary and unfair in the sense that it would include situations within the definition of "fraudulent" that have no meaningful / relevant connection to school admissions fraud. That's why it's not even actually the rule, and to act as if it were is arbitrary.

There are different rules for children of employees of the UK government whose work takes the family abroad as an example there. Might not your child's friends case, but some of my DDs sat their 11+ at their school abroad.

Yeah, they all differ.

We are a 30 min drive from dds grammar. I thought I had it hard with that commute but there are some parents driving 90 mins to get them to school. Super, super selective girls grammar with no others in the county.