Moving into rented accommodation in the catchment area-when can I safely move back?

Whether you like it or not renting to get a place at a popular school is against the rules. Many LAs now have lists of addresses they know are used for such rents and take a careful look at any short term rent or other suspicious activity. If they conclude that you have broken the rules they are entitled to take away your place even after your child has started at your preferred school.

I don't think you will be depriving anyone really other than those in the same position as you are, living outwith catchment but haven't come up with the ingenious solution (or don't have the money/balls) to peruse it.

Well done op - fantastic!

Anyway,I would say after he starts. I have been in a similar position where we moved after having a place allocated and our place was revoked.

When I moved into a good catchment area I had to show I was no longer liable for council tax at my old address before they would let my DC into the local school.

It's the system that's broken, that's not the ops fault.

Why renting to be the catchment is so " clearly wrong"? I have been living in the same area for 20 years. I am now a mum and really want to continue living in my community and send my child to the best local school ( 2 streets away from me). But i am not in the catchment area. Someone in the thread is suggesting " buying a house in the catchment area', I don't have 1 million pound. According to this debate, the children who are allowed into that school are the children of the parents who came to buy those 1 million pound houses just to be in the catchment area, they might be part of that small community ( 3 streets) and soon they will buy another expensive house in the catchment area of a good secondary school. How about people of the community who can't afford those houses? I have no option but to drop my cheap rental I love , then move into an expensive rental in the ' catchment area', then find a new place to live. People can judge me, but we can argue that if more schools had better standard we wouldn't be judging each other on this. Every child is entitled to a good education, regardless of their parent's income.

I'm afraid this is a game that a lot of people have resorted to playing and the only people getting rich off it are the estate agents! They still charge a fat commission despite knowing it will be a really easy sale/let. Sites like www.CatchmentProperty.com try to circumvent them but still they cream it in, not caring about the unfortunate ones they are allowing to be pushed out. Interestingly a report based on findings in Edinburgh shows the price hike you pay is the equivalent of paying to go private anyway. so perhaps the poster should just consider paying a different way... 6 months rent would go some way towards fees.

Its not really a grey area, though. Its clearly wrong (both on most school's rules and on any measure of fairness). Many do it in my part of the world too.

I have not read the whole thread but our one form entry primary school is FULL of children coming from way over the catchment. Two in ds's class are travelling over ten miles!!!! This is an oversubscribed primary school! The school secretary has raised her eyebrows over the amount if children living at the same address. It's a disgrace not more is done.

That being said I looked around one of put closest secondary's which is a flagship school. It has excellent results. Despite being in walking distance it's catchment is minuscule so we stood no chance. However DH owns a house in its catchment and we did briefly consider whether it was worth cobbling it. We decided against it. It was not worth the risk and as we live on the same road as the school secretary it would have been extra risky.

We did have other options though though I know parents who have moved into rented for exactly this reason.

It's hard I don't agree with it but morals are funny things and it's such a grey area and had we had no other options we might have considered lying.

It's what make me so cross about the state system. They have well intentioned rules and then allow a game to develop over their application. I can't really blame you for playing the game, but the LEA's have to find a way to reduce this from happening. It consumes coffee mornings in years 5 and 6, leads to kids facing long commutes, and reserves the best schools for those with the pointiest elbows.

Yes, Tiggytape, I mistook the date, so thanks for replying.

I was querying the way the OP went from suggesting renting to get a place to baptism to get into a religious school. It all seemed deliberately intended to wind everyone up. It just didn't seem genuine, although I appreciate all the responses were genuine.

I think this thread is a wind up, isn't it?

Isn't this thread specifically designed to get everyone up on their high horses?

Are you a troll, EN, or as K8 suggests, a brass necked little madam?

This is a long thread. I remembered reading some members posted that inspector called on the doorstep to check whether the address is genuine. Just curious, when they called, do they actually tell you that they are there to check whether you are genuinely living there? Or they pretend to call for something else? Do they identify themselves as from the School Admission team?

a) I think they are morally equivalent - the intent is to obtain a place in a school through TEMPORARILY doing something that you would otherwise not do, with the full intention of returning to the original status quo afterwards.

b) In practical terms, locally it would be treated as suspect and investigated. The discovery that you still had an additional property that has until recently been the main family home would almost certianly count as reasonable grounds not to award a place. Should you get away with it first time, the moving back to the original address (recently the tracking o addresses over the first year + in school has become more commonplace in response to just such situations) would trigger your child's removal from the school.

Just out of interest...

What would be the situation if someone owned 2 properties a few miles from each other and had owned both for multiple years.

They used to live in Property A and now live in Property B and rent A out.

The school they want their DS to go to is a dead-cert from Property A but very, very borderline from B.

Would it be wrong for them to rent out Property B for a year and move back to Property A - and then move back to Property B and rent out A again.

Is that less morally wrong than renting a property nearby - or just as bad?

Ah OK, I see what you mean. Parents still seem to be afraid of the 'bad' school here, but that seems to be more to do with the anti-social behaviour issues than the results IYSWIM, the results are definitely improving. On the anti-social behaviour front improvements are being made, but at a much slower rate, and that seems to be a stigma harder to shake free of than poor exam results. This is the first academic year we've been involved in sharing resources with the outstanding school, so it's hoped that we'll start to see a change in attitude amongst prospective parents come next year.

I have to admit that as things are now, I'm not too bothered about my foster daughter being at the failing school rather than the outstanding one, because she's free of the bad influences in her life she met at this school when she started and the overall standard of the school, although still not great, is improving. But that wasn't the situation last year, when she went off the rails well and true, and certainly wasn't the situation when she started here. If this was really her catchment school and no places at the outstanding school she just missed out on were given to children of parents renting properties then fair enough, but given that's been going on in order to avoid the failing school for years in this area now I strongly suspect that could have been the case. No amount of effort to turn her school around when she's in year 11 can compensate for the fact she should never have been here in the first place if everyone played by the rules, to me anyway.

Hysteria hasn't been reduced here sadly. If anything it's been raised amongst the parents at the 'outstanding' school, who are furious that teachers are mentoring here and that our kids are 'invading' their sports facilities I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways. At some point, you have to accept that your child is not the only one who matters in the education system, and steps are going to be taken to help out the others not fortunate enough to be at a fantastic school. If you don't like that, then home educate.

Similar is happening between my DCs school and a local one. The other school has improved how uniform is worn, hopefully the pupils are feeling less hopeless, and I know parents who applied there in preference to other local schools (which were often preferred).

Tiggy, similar scheme going on at the moment between a 'regarded by the public as good' comp and a 'regarded by the public as bad' comp locally - and it has reduced the hysteria amongst parents about moving heaven and earth to get into the 'goo' one of the pair.

Tbh, the 'good' one has a very privileged catchment, the other has one that is very much not so, so IMHO the differences in terms of actual quality of teaching and learning aren't that great anyway....

Tiggytape- re the sending the best of the best school to help out at the worst, it's being trialled at our failing school at the moment and it's doing wonders to the grades of the kids who want to be there and want to learn. Admittedly it has widened the gap between them and the kids who don't want to be there and aren't interested, but I do think to a point that if you come into my lessons and point blank refuse to cooperate with me, there's only a certain amount I can do. I will NEVER give up on a pupil, but I'm not a miracle worker, and I can't get you an A in my subject if you won't let me teach you.

Again, the majority of the kids who are downright disruptive and refuse to learn and are falling further and further behind the others as a result are from families where the parents just aren't bothered. Sad but true.

Continuing on from my first point, a message to all you parents in the catchment area for a failing school considering cheating the system, from a teacher in a special measures school with a bloody awful reputation: if your child comes through my classroom door eager to learn and trying their best in my lessons, I'll pick up on that. Trust me. I don't care if your child's best is a C or an A*. If your child is committed and wants to work hard, I will do my utmost to help them get the best grade in my subject they can possibly achieve, regardless of how many of their classmates want to be there and put some effort in. I will (and have in the past) give them extra revision sessions at lunch/after school if I have to.