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

You do realise the number of people who live their whole lives in rented accomodation? I don't and will never own a home. I have moved house more times than I can remember, at least once a year since I left my parent's (council) house at 18. Living somewhere in rented accomodation which turns out not to be permanent is not fraud in itself.

Renting out an owned property and renting somewhere else for you to live while you try and sell off that property, is also not fraud.

As I've said before, I cannot and will not argue with people who move house permanently, because that is allowed according to the rules. Renting with no intention of permanently moving into that home is not allowed so I can and will argue.

I am never going to budge on that, because I will not stop fighting my foster daughters corner. Ever. I'm simply the parent on the other side of the argument whose child you are robbing of a place if you rent. Sorry.

Why are people moving house permanently - who can afford the inflated rent or house prices due to proximity to a great school - not considered to be cheating children out of their rightful school places?

"All of you who agree with what the OP is proposing or have done it yourselves, what if you were the parents of the child who had been in catchment comfortably for the good school for years, but lost out by a couple of metres. You then find out that parents have been cheating like this, so your child most likely lost out to their child. "

But if the OP bought a house further in catchment, so getting a place "legitimately", the child on the edge would still lose out. Is this actually any better for that child that loses out? If so, why? Because the OP didn't "cheat" an unfair system? Because they spent more money to achieve their aims? Or what?

Having worked in Council Tax it would be the CTax angle that scuppers anyone trying to have two properties at once, it is known as second home discount and clearly demonstrates you are living in one property but own another.

We had this lots with people moving temporarily for jobs where the commute is too far but their intention was always to return to the "family" home.

Secondly, we don't have a "catchment" as such here, it is a if there enough places everyone gets in, if it is oversubscribed then it goes on priority and as the crow flies proximity to the school.

We lived very close to an outstanding primary, where both my children attend. We needed a bigger house, we were in a 3 bed and needed a 4 bed and so we moved house.

Our closest secondary school is outstanding, that was sheer luck, nothing to do with planning but we have been here 3 years and ds1 is in year 5. I would be incensed if someone rented to beat my son to his place in the outstanding secondary.

Lots of people move house because they want their child to go to a certain school, just like people move house to be convenient for work. The only difference is that OP doesn't want to make that move permanent.

OP you need to do everything as if you were moving permanently. The main thing is that you actually live in the rented accomodation, as otherwise it will be fraud.

Once your DD has started school you are under no obligation to remain in the catchment home - it would be a bit blatant to move away before the first half term holiday though.

It is not fraud and it is not illegal as long as you are actually moving and it is not a temporary arrangement.

Why is this more unethical than paying for years of tutoring to make your DC appear more intelligent than others, or for the entire family to fake a belief in god for a decade?

Ok, let's try this from a different angle. All of you who agree with what the OP is proposing or have done it yourselves, what if you were the parents of the child who had been in catchment comfortably for the good school for years, but lost out by a couple of metres. You then find out that parents have been cheating like this, so your child most likely lost out to their child.

Talk me through how you'd feel about that please.

Our LEA have prosecuted people for doing precisely this (Essex).

PS Mrsdevere I agree with you re. the income inequality in islington. I find it quite depressing.

Yes but sometimes the 'good' school is perceived as such because it's historically the one that people move/cheat/lie their way into and these parents tend to be the ones who are more switched on or committed to education. The chaotic families, the homeless families, the refugees, the traveller families, they all tend not to be in a position to sign a church register for three years or rent a flat in catchment for six months. So they get assigned the 'bad' school in disproportionate numbers and while many are high achievers, statistically these groups are more likely to underachieve at school. The 'good' school meanwhile gets supposedly better and better because of what Fiona Millar calls the 'drift to posh' in admissions.
Allowing switched-on people to cheat is not the way to tackle the varying quality of schools. Quite the contrary.

All this talk of "cheating" and "fraud".... The system is blatantly unfair. Why the hell shouldn't people "cheat" if otherwise they would get assigned a rotten school on the basis of their postcode?

And if all the people in the bad postcode got "legitimate" places at the bad school by moving into the catchment, as some of you seem to be suggesting, what then? The overall problem doesn't go away. There are still a fixed number of places at the good school, so someone has to lose out.

Doodle- you said that the school in special measures was 'not ideal for my DS.' That in itself implies that it's not ideal specifically for your child, and that it's closer to being ideal for another. If that wasn't what you meant then I apologise.

That aside, as PRH said, anyone who rents while still owning their own home with no intention of remaining in the rented property any longer than necessary to get their child into a 'good school' they would not have been given a place at from their actual home is cheating the system, and therefore breaking the rules and indeed the law. By doing this, you are depriving a child who would otherwise have had a place at the good school of just this, and forcing them into the failing school. I am NOT saying that the system is fair, because I don't think it is, but as things stand it is the law in this country when it comes to choosing a school for your child. Therefore, by breaking the law to get your child into a better school than they would have otherwise been allocated according to your postcode, you are implying through your actions that the failing school is not good enough for your child, but perfectly fine for someone else's. As guardian to a child who missed out on a place at an outstanding OFSTED rated school by a couple of metres from her actual home in an area where this cheating the system goes on, I am going to take it incredibly personally, particularly given the things my foster daughter has been caught up in at this school which she would have been statistically less likely to encounter at the outstanding school. Sorry.

According to the law, if you live in an area in which your postcode dictates you can get into a failing school but not an outstanding one, then you have these options:

1. you can move house (as I've said before, if you permanently relocate to a house closer to school A than my child, I cannot and will not argue with you, because you are acting within the law and the rules)

or 2) you can go private. I accept that's not an option for everyone, but for some it is.

If neither of those are feasible, then that does NOT give you permission to break the law and deprive someone else's child of a place at a good school , for the reasons I outlined above. Sorry. I'm not saying it's fair, but it's the law, and in this country we are bound to the law. You can campaign to improve the standard of the school you are allocated. You can appeal. You can work with your child's teachers to ensure they get the best possible out of their education- as a teacher in a failing school I would love it if the parents were more on board. But don't break the law and take the place of a child who should be entitled to one according to the rules, that's immoral and unfair and indeed criminal.

OP I am not condoning your actions but I 100% understand them. Since 1 March I have wondered where on earth we have gone wrong. We live in a town with very good schools and have not managed to secure a place in any of them. We have been pushed out of town to a school which has just come out of special measures. We subsequently visited it and found it to be a complete misfit for our son.

One of the schools which is the nearest has a rule which I have never heard of before. Once it gets oversubscribed it looks at the distance to an alternative school and if you are nearer to an alternative school than the next pupil on the list you get pushed down. The only snag here is that the alternative school is full! Mad rule and I don't understand what business it is of the school to look at how near you are to the alternate school if that alternate school is either very full/oversubscribed/complete misfit/one I may not have put down on my application form for my child.

So yes we are facing a bleak outlook and everything hangs off an appeal. I can understand desperate parents.

pansyflimflam - Around 1400 fraudulent applications are detected by LAs each year. In some LAs this isn't a problem at all but others find significant numbers of fraudulent applications.

Doodledumdums - If you cheat you are forcing another child to go to the special measures school who would otherwise have got a place at the "good" school. You are saying that your child's needs are more important than obeying the law and more important than other children's needs.

The special measures school will be getting lots of attention to ensure it comes out of special measures quickly. You may well find that in a year or two it is better than the "good" school.

The school that is in special measures isn't ideal for anyone's child! I never implied that is was?! But why should my child (and other people's children) be forced to go there because of our postcode? I deserve for my child to go to a good school just as much as the people who are in the catchment for the good secondary school in my area. (Both schools are of equal distance to my house- so I fail to understand why one is available to me and the other is not.)

But in the process of getting what's "best for your child" you've broken the law. As I said before, if you genuinely live closer to a good school than my DD and get her place, I can't argue with you. If you rent to take a place from a child like her, then I can and I will.

I'll ask again, why is a school in special measures "not ideal" for your DS who lives in the catchment area, but perfectly acceptable for my foster daughter who would be in catchment for the nice school if people didnt cheat the system?

But I really don't think you can blame people for wanting to cheat the system, because the system is ridiculous. It doesn't make someone a bad person for wanting the best for their child, it's all anyone wants. I do appreciate that there are two sides to this argument, but it is the system which needs to be blamed, not individual people.