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

"so long as you abide by the rules, which could mean renting for a while, and you genuinely live there."

Merci, the point it that if you rent for a while, while owning / renting another house, and you have rented wholly or mainly to secure a place with no intention of that being your sole residence or home, then you are NOT abiding by the rules....

Every child deserves a good education but when the places are allocated as they are then there will always be unfairness.

My DS might deprive a child of a place in the outstanding school nearby if I choose to send him there. He will take priority over a child who lives nearer simply because he is autistic and has a Statement of SEN.....and it means finding the best school locally which can meet his needs. As it happens that is NOT "the outstanding school nearby" but the less prestigious one further away because it's half the size of all the other local schools and has a good name for pastoral care.

However in the absence of that school I might indeed choose the outstanding school (if I felt they were the best option for DS) and deprive another child of a place.

its not fraudulent, its using the rules to your own benefit. bit like the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. so long as you abide by the rules, which could mean renting for a while, and you genuinely live there.

and yes, it is crap that the truly poor can miss out, maybe some other posters who can afford to buy their way to a good education outright by buying a house in the catchment area should think on about that, instead of feeling hard done by when someone uses the rules to their benefit

anyhow, no advice for the op but certainly not criticising her for trying. the number of local govt officials being made redundant here, id be amazed if there was anyone left to investigate.

Someone asked about homeless families. They fall into a separate category for admissions due to their vulnerability. I'm in primary and have been put over infant lass size to accommodate homeless children.

So let's get this straight.

Child A, who lives in street A, "deserves" a place at good school A.

But Child B, who lives in street B, doesn't deserve any such thing and has to go to bad school B.

And just so we're clear, House A is nearly always more expensive than House B.

Where exactly do "fair"/"deserving"/"immoral"/"denying Child A their rightful place" come into this?

marinagasolina thanks. Trying not to worry, it's nervewracking!

OP, sorry for the hijack!

And also, merci, someone with the money to rent a second property while already owning / renting another is definitely not 'poor'... and it is often the genuinely poor who miss out in the 'sharp elbowed jockeying for position' of which fraudulent renting is one of the more egregious examples.

Merci, so on the same morality it is OK for the 'realtively poor' to steal, though it should be illegal for the 'relatively rich'?

Round here, it is a problem for a few schools only, not a general thing.

So the resources available to the LEA - and to the schools, who also investigate if e.g. they are given an address on entry, or a change of address during the time at school, that does not match the one previously held on the system from application - can be focused very specifically on those schools. And a lot of it is automated - screens against well-known properties, screens of application address vs other addresses held ofr the same family etc.

It's just another way of keeping out those not rich enough to buy close to the school in the first place, all this 'oooh it's fraud'. Oooh you're poorer than me and it's not fair - more like!

Aufaniae you should be fine as you've gone from rented to own home- the offenders here own their own home, then move into rented without selling their own home because they are only renting to get their child a school place they are not entitled to.

Mrsdevere that's exactly how I feel. It isn't fair that some children have access to a better education because they have the right post code. However, parents like the op robbing children like ours from places they are entitled to by law, regardless of whether or not that law is fair, is just plain immoral and downright criminal.

I think you are over estimating the resources that most LEAs have. I think they would only investigate something very obvious or someone who had been indiscreet. They do not have the power to bring you in and question you and look into your private affairs, they would need a court order for that and they would have to take a risk financially with lawyers etc that they would win.

I want to be clear I am not agreeing with someone doing this although I am in a place where the worst schools are not too bad so I am not sure how desperate people can get in these situations. Going to the right school can be transforming and although I am not proud to admit it I would do it too. I have a DD with SN, we are moving heaven and earth to get her in the right place - renting another place and denying another child, well you know if I am honest I could live with it. As it happened we are moving lock stock and barrel and sending her to an independent. But I have that choice and some people don't due to work etc.

To be honest I think this might be a London thing, round here no one gives a rats ass.

Agree with ComeIntoTheGarden. The overlap is not a problem, because I presume that you no longer rent the previous property, and it should be ckear from your paper trail that your move is to your sole home, which happens to be in catchment.

You may, of course, get asked some questions about it. But you have nothing to hide, so submitting everything - title deeds, exchange dates, notice letter for renatl property etc etc - would show an innocent sequence of events very clearly.

Have you still got a tenancy agreement for the rented place? As Tiggytape has said several times, it isn't moving house that is the problem. It's the short term move where a family has kept hold of the former home do that they can move back in once they've got a school place. Assuming that you have given up the rented property, and have sorted out all the other paperwork with utility companies etc, I can't see why that should muck anything up.

pansy,

I suppose the point is 'how clever - and how long term prepared - do you have to be, in order for your 'back story' to be considered credible'

Currently, your back story
a) has to go back several years, and last most of the duration of your child's time at school (as the threat of place removal remains throughout their time there if entry is found to be fraudulent)
b) has to involve you moving into a property large enough for your family, for several years
c) has to involve a credible disposal of your previous address (as e.g. renting out old house, changing electoral register to new one etc will ONLY be considered non-fraudulent IF there is a good reason other than school entry for the move - simply owning another house will be grounds for investigation so the back story has to add up long-term)

Basically, the aim seems to be trying to make 'avoiding being found out for fraud' at least as expensive as 'doing it properly' - ie moving into catchment as your only residence - and to make 'the risk of being found out' sufficiently large that iut does not seem worth taking.

I meant to say, might any of this muck up the application?

Ooh, I'm worried now. We're currently waiting to find out about admissions for primary.

We moved just before the deadline, from a rented place to a bought house, in a different area of the same town (near the good schools). We intended to move last summer, but one thing and another meant it took ages for everything to go through; in the end we got the house in December and moved in literally a week before the deadline in Jan. There was an overlap of our rented property and our new house, we had both places until after the admission deadline.

Our council asks for your council tax number. I didn't have that at the time of application, but emailed with it when I had it and they replied to say that was fine.

I still haven't got round to moving all of our accounts over to the new place, and we're not on the electoral role yet. Might any of this going to muck up the application?

But, pansy, the point is that even with changing the electoral register and creating a elaborate lie back story, the LEA may take a look at the relevant dates and decide the change of address is bogus and the person won't "get away with it" at all.

Yes but ultimately if you are clever and change electoral register then you will get away with it as long as you have a back story.

Seriously it is not right but not that wrong and it does stack up financially against independent fees. A freind of mine went to Church (and she has 5 children) until the day after she got the last one into the preferred church school. One of her sons is in a Russell Group Uni and the others are all going through school and sixth form and are really successful. Technically it is a bit morally dodgy but I cannot get upset about it. At least those children have a motivated parent willing them to do well.

There is a rash of first holy communions at our school swiftly preceeded by a baptism for a few 9 years olds.... The only decent High School here is Catholic, you work it out. Makes me laugh, the Priest is just rolling his eyes at people suddenly turning up at Church, they all know the score here but cannot refuse to baptise children. My kids go to the school and high school and I pulled no tricks to get in, I would have though.

I cannot believe people get so very upset about this, there are awful things happening in the world and this is not one of them. Most people would do this sort of thing if they had the means to and were faced with their children going to a terrible school or a great one.

OP, my foster daughter is in year 11 at the crap local comp everyone tries to avoid. When she was in year 6 she was still living with her parents and they put down the nicer, overall better school their home had been in the catchment area for years for as their first choice. My foster daughter lost out on a place at that school by a couple of metres (literally), her parents' appeal failed and she ended up at the crap school. Thanks to getting in with a dodgy crowd and controlling boyfriend while there, the last few years have been a nightmare for her, her mum has chucked her out, she's ended up with me after a period of homelessness and all sorts of other horrid stuff no teenager should have to go through.

Now, I'm not saying that wouldn't have happened had she gone to the better school. I'm also not saying I wish what she went through had happened to someone else's child, because believe me, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But the thought that my child might have lost out on a place at the school she would have been entitled to a place legally at any other year, and therefore at an environment less likely to push her down the path she went down, to someone like you lying and cheating the system to their own advantage quite frankly makes me sick.

'expat - in London the houses near a great school might cost £100k+ more than houses not near to good schools
You can get a 4 bedroom house in a 'bad' catchment area for the same price as a small 2/3 bedroom in a 'good' catchment area.'

So then you go legit and sell up and buy the 2/3 bedroom. Or you homeschool. You participate in fraud and get caught you deserve what you get. Life is full of compromises. Diddums.

Agree with Teacherwith2kids. However much people try to justify this kind of behaviour it is clearly against the rules.