School application from rented address - nothing council can do?

That might be the sentiment but the devil is in the detail.How on earth do you prove what the parents' intentions are? And unless it's a holiday let, how do you determine what temporary is? I let houses out and the agency has always put the tenants on a 6 month STLA whatever the tenants intentions.

Councils that are serious about clamping down on admissions fraud have dealt with this by requiring people in rented accommodation to show that they have severed all links with their previous addresses. So owning a house outside the catchment while renting a house closer to the school would fall foul of this requirement, quite rightly.

We let out our home and moved into rented accommodation to get eldest child into grammar school .But we did it with the intention of ultimately buying in catchment which we did.

If they are renting temporarily in order to get a place at their preferred school they are breaking the rules

That might be the sentiment but the devil is in the detail.How on earth do you prove what the parents' intentions are? And unless it's a holiday let, how do you determine what temporary is? I let houses out and the agency has always put the tenants on a 6 month STLA whatever the tenants intentions.

Bolognese is right.

Very rich or very poor seem to benefit from this. Around the school I think mentioned are houses for 1.3 million plus. There is no family housing available for people wanting to buy for under £900,000k that does not require over £100,000k of work. At the bottom there is council property with families who can acesss the school. Where the issue lies is with families with lower middle class incomes who cannot afford to buy and who are not eligible for social housing. So their only alternaive is to rent out their property and rent near the school to get in. Its their only form of social mobility and to give their children the best education they can. I know people who have done this and some who work in education too who have done this. It is not illegal at all and it happens all the time because people are desperate to give their kids a good education and cannot afford to send them privately (and wouldnt if they could afford to) or buy in the area. Why should it be for the wealthy or very poor?

And when I said to the head at an open evening that I was concerened dd wouldn't get a place his words irrc "you could always rent a house nearby, we just need to see a council tax bill".

It's up to the local council. Round here that's perfectly allowable and infact encouraged by the headmaster at the local grammar. Cost my dd a place at the grammar as we wouldn't do it.

Here it's allowed as long as people actually move into the rented house. But they never do, but even then the school don't investigate it. Maybe they would if you gave them specific names but I didn't know the names of anyone who'd done it in dds year. It tends to be families from a town a bit further away than our village. But the school must be suspicious that they attend a primary school in x village 15 miles away but the address is in town. But they do Fuck all.

If they are renting temporarily in order to get a place at their preferred school they are breaking the rules. Most councils where this is a problem have rules in place that if parents own a house and rent another they will use the address of the house they own and ignore the rented property. So, even if the parents intend to live in the rented property permanently, they still have to use the address of the house they own.

It is fraudulent, albeit not criminal fraud. The rules are clear. Parents must apply from the permanent address where the child lives.

But how are they being fraudulent prh, the family has moved fair and square into the rented house? People 'let out their house and rent another all the time for a myriad of reasons.
I don't even think it is unethical-if they were not living in the rented house then another family would be.

sanctimonious posters

As Tiggytape says it is not sanctimonious to expect the rules to apply to everyone. If you don't like the rules campaign against them as the people you list did. Just breaking them puts you in the wrong.

I think you will find that the "wealthy elite" generally send their children to independent schools.

You may like to think of cheating as "standing up to the wealthy elite". In my experience it generally means depriving someone who is no more (and possibly significantly less) wealthy than you. And, as enforcement by councils improves, it increasingly frequently means that you are condemning your child to an unpopular school instead of the middling school they would have got if you had been honest.

If a 'rule' is unfair and discriminatory it is perfectly right and morale to break that rule. Yes there might be consequences but that is how we make a fairer society, brave people standing up for their human rights against oppression, even if it makes the establishment uncomfortable. Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Liu Xiaobo, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Susan Brownell Anthony, Roxana Saberi... to name but a few.

So perhaps one of the sanctimonious posters can explain why it is fair for millionaires to be allowed to cheat buy their way into a good school but the less worthy wealthy who can only perhaps afford to rent in the area for six months should do what they are told and send their children to a bog standard comp.

Families should do the best they can for their family and if it means standing up to the wealthy 'elite' then we have a duty to do so.

Thankgoditsover - yes, the same school. We would have got in on distance last year, for the first time in living memory. But we went for an alternative option (as did many others living even closer to the legendary one) and have no regrets.

Yes absolutely it isnt actually 'fraudulent' or 'unfair' only in your eyes it is and hers

It is fraudulent, albeit not criminal fraud. The rules are clear. Parents must apply from the permanent address where the child lives. Doing otherwise is clearly against the rules.

And yes, it is unfair. By acting in this way the parents have deprived another child of a place that is rightfully theirs.

As has been pointed out up thread, if they are found out any place they have obtained by giving a false address can be taken away from them even after the child has started school. If that happens their child will be given a place at the nearest school with places available. That is unlikely to be a popular school. Every year thousands of parents find that their child ends up with a worse school than they would have got if they hadn't tried to cheat the system.

Agony and Thankgoditsover, I suspect we are all talking about the same coughNorthLondoncough school

Now, the million quid question is: let's see how / whether that school maintains the results that led to its popularity in the first place, now that its intake is not externally managed by "entrepreneurial" parents

Yes absolutely it isnt actually 'fraudulent' or 'unfair' only in your eyes it is and hers. Its a very subjective matter. It isnt even illegal. It isnt even any of her business and disgusting that she should be involving herself in her affairs and calling the council.

We have seen this judging in history, 'shopping' of neighbours behind their backs. Spite and jealousy driven. Pretending to be friendly whilist stabbing her in the back and dressing it up as being moral and fair. Its ageless and happens again and again in communities. Petty small mindedness.

Judge not, and you shall not be judged: condemn not, and you shall not be condemned: forgive, and you shall be forgiven.

Reporting someone who is acting fraudulently to unfairly obtain a school place remind you "of the second world war and the Germans shopping their Jewish neighbours to the SS" Crouchendmumoftwo? Really now?

There were a couple of parents who did this at my DC's school. There's almost nothing that the LA can do about it. The families had genuinely moved to the rented house while work was being done on their owned home with a view to selling it. They later decided not to sell so moved back home. There is nothing the LA could do, their original application was valid and their reasons were plausible.

Agree with Bolognese.

You really ought to mind your own business and concentrate on your own life. You come across as sneaky and two faced with too much time on your hands. What she is doing is not illegal and to interfere with her life and potentially her kids future is none of your concern at all.

You act like one of those surburban curtain twitching busybodies.

I know people who have moved and rented to be near a school as they were not in a catchment for a decent school. I would dream of getting involved in their affairs.

Lots of people taking the moral highground here.

I would not be able to sleep at night knowing I was putting an 'acquaintance' and their children who Id known from nursery in jeapordy.

It reminds me of the second world war and the Germans shopping their Jewish neighbours to the SS. Friendly to their faces and kind and behind their backs nasty, judging and cruel.

Maybe next time you see her you should make a citizens arrest!

Its hard to say its a moral issue, maybe illegal (in this case NOT), but certainly not immoral.

In this case a parent rents in an area to get into a school, (maybe they could never have afforded to buy that close, we just dont know), but in the process deprives a child living further out from getting a place. Is that anymore or less moral than a wealthy family buying a million pound house next to the school but actually living in it for the sole purpose of getting their children in to the school, which also deprives children living further out from getting a place. Or indeed a family starting to go to a church just so they can jump up the admissions criteria which would also deprive children living further out from getting a place. Or private tutors for the grammars, or any number of ways to jump the admissions system.

The whole admissions criteria involves doing everything possible to get into a school and I challenge any parent not to stretch the 'truth' in an appeal to get the final place in a good school (and send their DC to a bog standard comp) ahead of a more deserving child who lives further out.

This is a very sanctimonious thread filled with posts of 'I should get into the school, because I live in an expensive house in the right area and we dont want those less deserving parents playing the system to get in'.

The op should be more honest and fess up to her acquaintance that she has tried to stop her DC getting in to the good school. Who is really the immoral person in this tale?

Blimey agonybeetle I've just looked at the admissions for the high profile girls school near us and they're extraordinary. 2014 a top band radius about the size of my kitchen cupboard. The next year, it's 10 times bigger.

I wonder if we're talking the same one? It's now worth a place on our daughter's caf form...

The intake area of a high-profile sought after girls school near us more than doubled last year, compared to previous years. This appears to be the direct result of the LA clamping down on people playing the system by means of creative address management.

For what it's worth, looking a school options for us down the road, we have noticed that a couple of the very popular schools in our area have had quite a significant change in the distance cut-off (further distance that still got an offer) published by the council.

We've been told that this is down to council having tightened the screws in a major way in how they inspect, check and withdraw offers related to this well know trick of middle class families trying to get a step ahead.

Are you absolutely sure the situation is what the parent said it was though? For example what if you were living in a house with hefty mortgage and high rental value. If you were is straightened circumstances it might make financial sense to rent out your home to cover the hefty mortgage whilst you spent your income on lower rent. If you got a school advantage out of the situation, well that's an added plus. I certainly wouldn't tell somebody I met in the street that that was the case. Likewise what if divorce is possibly on the cards. Again one party might not want to tell random school run mum that's why they are living where they are and they may or may not go back.