To move out of rented house in catchment a month after DS starts school?

[Strawbsy]

Hello,

My title sounds terrible and I expect I'm in for a flaming.

We moved into a rented house last month in the catchment of a very popular school that we wanted DS to go to. The council called today and offered him a place for September. We're couldn't be happier that a place came up so quickly.

BUT, we also just found a perfect flat to buy. It's large with a garden but a project that needs lots of work. This makes it within our price range and a bedroom more than we thought we could afford. The flat is further away from the school and almost definitely wouldn't have secured us a place for DS.

The councils do investigate families renting close by to get a place at a good school and I know that for this school they do a home visit to check you live where you say you live. I am worried DS school place will be withdrawn if the council see we moved out a few weeks or a month after he started school. What would you do? I am obviously working on the assumption that we offer on the great flat and it all works out.

I think you should stay at least a year

This is a perfect illustration how a state education system that supposedly offers the same opportunity to all, regardless of their parents' income or background, can be played like a fiddle by more affluent parents.

Don't like the school in your catchment area? -No problem we'll rent out a house in the same area for a few months and hey presto we'll have a place.

Terrified of the thought that little Jonny will have to go to the local comp and hang around with kids who eat non-organic fruit and veg? - Easy we'll hire a private tutor to teach them through the entrance exam.

This isn't a go at you op per se, but a reflection that kids from poorer homes, don't really get a fair shot, thanks to sharp elbowed, cash rich middle class system, buying advantage. Just remember op if this stunt comes off, it will have been at the expense of another child who had a better case for attending that school than your child.

The thi g is that the OP won't be moving "a month after DS starts school", anyone who has gone through the house buying process knows it takes much longer than that.

I agree, worry about this if and when you exchange contracts, and this may be months away. You are living where you are now and that is the basis of your school allocation, which is correct. You aren't pretending DC live at Grandma's house or whatever, or planning to move back to your lovely house 2km down the road now that you have the place!
And frankly, though for my own personal reasons I wish councils cared about this and pursued it, I don't think many of them do.

That is just not true ComposHat, it is no coincidence that a lot of these schools are in the 'nice', affluent areas. Those who are 'local' are the ones who are well off/comfortable or have had some kind of 'windfall' and own their houses/flats. They have no problems getting their children into the schools.

Equally, some of us live in a black hole when it comes to school allocation. I had to move for my DS's school application in 2010 as the nearest school was RC and my DP is Jewish. The secular schools were all outstanding but looking at the distance to school figures we would've missed out by about 50 metres. Most accepted up to about 800 metres.

Agree with Curlew and Compos. This is a really disingenous thread. OP herself has admitted more than once that they rented purely to get this school place. The idea that you need to rent somewhere 35 miles away from your home to 'find out about the area' is laughable tripe. Most people couldn't afford the lettings agent fees, the deposit, etc. etc. just to get a school place and deprive someone who's much more deserving of it because they actually live there.

We recently bought our first flat. It's less than a fifth of a mile from the nearest school (one of the very few secular primary schools in the area, and as a Jewish/Christian atheist couple we are not likely to get into nor want to get into any of the religious ones) but my daughter may still not get a place due to people like this OP who use their wealth to exploit and play the system.

I rented less than 35 miles away from a previous property, to see if the commute from the new town was ok etc. no children involved.

Whether its home edding, paying for private school, providing tutors, helping with homework, enabling a child to get into a particular school by changing house or religion, badgering the lea for extra support, helping out at school, trips to the library, having access to technology, paying for extra curricula activities, practicing sports/music/whatever with children; some children will always have an advantage because of their parents. I think this holds true wherever you are in the world, whatever political system you live under.

We can all decide that our society is better when every one has access to a good education. However you will never stop parents doing their best for their own children, middle class, sharp elbowed or otherwise.

Also, if I had to move to north London (which to me as a sw Londoner might as well be another planet) I would definitely rent first, particularly if I wanted my child to start school at the beginning of the school year. Rent might be expensive,but so is stamp duty and conveyancing fees.

Whole system sucks. I think LEAs and schools should employ private detectives to stamp this hateful practice out

Why employ costly detectives when having a lottery system of allocations would make things a lot fairer, more transparent and less susceptible to manipulation.

I don't think you've dome anything wrong OP. The simple fact is that there are not enough schools of a decent standard and it's human nature to do what you can to help you and yours. If you have the means to buy and sell and ensure your children go to a great school - well, who wouldn't, in that position?

We moved from an area of London where, as PP describe here, you could live less than 500m from a number of schools and still not get into any of them.

There has been little forward planning by successive governments and the situation is only expected to get worse. This week, the ONS reported that 2011/2012 (DD born 2011) saw the highest UK birth rate since 1972. Schools where we moved from have a shortage of places for this September. Do we think that by September 2016, when this huge bulge is expected to start school, adequate provision will be in place? Do we expect that by the time they're all 11, there'll be adequate secondary school places for everyone? Of course not - so you do what you have do to within your means.

I think what is disengious is to 'pretend' that the less affluent locals would fill these schools up if it wasn't for the nasty, wealthy renters moving in with their second homes elsewhere! Certainly at my DS's school it is the poorer folk travelling in from afar, as they want a better education for their children but can't afford the properties next to the school.

Loads of people move just before their kids start school. We did - not only because our local school was a bit rubbish, but because we wanted to move out of the city. Essentially we did what the OP did, but we bought a much cheaper house. If we had hated it we would have moved away again.

There is no issue here. Op can't buy this house that she has seen, because her old property, isn't even on the market yet.

However you will never stop parents doing their best for their own children, middle class, sharp elbowed or otherwise.

'Doing their best for their own children' inevitably comes at another child's expense, often one whose parents lack the financial clout, time resources or 'know how' to play the system.

Education is too important to be left to the vagaries of a market free for all, in which the wealthy inevitably come out on top and basically perpetuate inequality. There is plenty that could be done to stop this sort of education apartheid happening, but Blair/Brown and Cameron all ran away from the issue.

"Doing their best for their own child inevitably comes at another child's expense"

But I feel my child is equally deserving of a place as any other child. If whatever crazy admissions system there is offers us a place we will be pleased to accept, thank-you.

But juggling do you really think that in the circumstances laid out by the original poster moving into a house for a few months solely to get into a home, she is genuinely more deserving than parents who have lived within that school's catchment area all their lives, but lack the financial wherewithal to move to a house next-door to the school in order to secure their child's place?

I was probably thinking more of my own situation and DC Compos - I generally tend to take the OP as a spring-board to wider discussion. (That's just what I always do)

But basically I take the view that no child is more deserving of a place than any other, except perhaps for children with special needs who quite rightly should go to the top of any allocation list, and be able to choose the school best suited to meeting their needs.

For all other children I view it as a level playing field - and often quite a competitive one at that.
Just because you do better in a test, live nearer the school, have a sibling there already, or go to church more often, doesn't make you intrinsically any more deserving of a place at any school.
They are just sometimes arbitrary, sometimes more logical, criteria used by admissions and schools to allocate places at over-subscribed schools.

compos - I don't think that was the OP's original intention. She makes it clear that she is renting to see what the area is like (which is fair enough, we would do the same and for us 35 miles could be the difference between the inner-city and deepest darkest countryside) and, not surprisingly, made sure she is renting within the catchment for the school they like for their DS (she says it's a popular school that they like, not actual mention of it's Ofsted status). As things have turned out, a dream house has come on the market right now. Presumably if it hadn't then OP would have stayed renting until something else they liked in the new area came up. And it does sound like this dream house is local, just not as close as the rented house.

I think this is one of those threads iykwim

I think you need to distinguish between the system (and I would agree lottery allocation good, church schools bad) and what individual parents do for their own children given the system available to them.

School is IMO only about 30% of primary education. The rest is what happens at home. I think most inequality in education is caused by lack of resources at home. Children bring their advantages to school more than vice versa.

.... And the OP is not likely to be leaving her current house any time soon, as has been pointed out many times.

Buy the flat, do it up & rent it out for a year and then move in. Or alternatively, stay put in the rented house & look for a place to buy in that area either through auction houses or traditional estate agents. If you move out so soon after securing the place are likely to lose it.