Lying to get into non catchment school...

[Thelovecats]

Not really an AIBU, more wanting to know if this is really a thing people do.
We live on an island, where everyone gets a place at their catchment school. recently I have found that someone I know is about to arrange a 'rental' of a property in their chosen catchment and is fabricating a story about splitting up with their husband in order to get their kid into their chosen school (they have already been refused the original application).
So, I'm curious, how common is this elsewhere? What happens if they get found out? I'm not bothered by people applying to whatever school they like, but I don't think I could lie to get a place. Could you? Have you? I don't want to discuss this with anyone I know IRL because I don't want to get the person into trouble.

I think other parents blow the whistle, I have a friend whose marriage broke up and she was moving with her kids, the house was sold and equity split. Anyway she applied for local primary, quite legitimate as that was where she was living. She moved the week the offers came out and she was just out of the catchment area. Apparently several parents phoned the LA that day. However you feel about the policy that little four year old had gone through parents breaking up, had to leave her home and ended up in a primary with none of her friends from pre school. The mum said she was treated like a major criminal by the LA.

Entering into a rental arrangement won't be enough to establish that they genuinely live there. If or when the LA looks into it they would want to see that, for instance, the family is registered with a doctor near the new address, that that's the address for child benefit etc, and they could well send someone to ring the bell at random times to see if the family is living there. The fact that it's a smallish island makes that a very easy exercise to undertake.

I think that our LA have it correct with the siblings thing.

Basically the order is (excluding LAC and those with specific Social or education needs):-

Catchment siblings
Other Catchment
Out of catchment Siblings
Other out of catchment

With distance as the tie break.

Admissions teams have increasingly sophisticated ways of checking for fraudulent applications - I wouldn't do it.
Although I do know of a case where a fraudulent application was uncovered after an offer letter was returned unopened, marked "not known at this address".
I think it's just as unfair when wealthy parents pay for barristers to win school place appeals on technicalities though, leapfrogging other parents who were higher up on the reserve list.
This also places considerable pressure on local authorities who have to respond to a barrage of Freedom of Information requests from solicitors as soon as places are announced.

IFinishedTheBiscuits They have to a respond to a barrage of FoI requests from requesters, probably parents, acting through solicitors - to be precise about it.

And I notice that you regard any legal point that you disagree with as a "technicality".

Mumoftwoyoungkids Some LAs have an unofficial and undeclared policy of keeping teachers' children away from the teacher-parents if the parent wishes - and a good thing too. My father was a teacher: he never taught at my school but he did at my sister's, and he taught her, and there was always a row at dinner afterwards!

Its not so stringent .., LA wont check but people talk ... due to changes schools are getting full or left half empty based on catchment and amened staff accordingly reguardless of facilities capacity etc

I have a friend who worked as a nanny in London, and she told me that her previous employers rented a flat in the catchment area of their preferred school, which they then got into. I don't think they still have the flat - the short-term rental cost would have been much less than seven years of private schooling.

I don't know how common this is, however. I wouldn't have thought it very prevalent where I live now, although we did have to send proof of our address (utility bills, council tax etc) after I applied to DS's over-subscribed school.

If someone, with or without a barrister, wins a school place because the admissions authority has got the law wrong, that seems absolutely fair to me.

The only time I think it's unfair for out of catchment siblings to NOT get a place, is when there has been a bulge year, and the first child got into the school while living at the address that any other year, they would not have got into without it being a bulge year.

It seems harsh to be forced to go to a particular school, and then to not have the siblings allowed to attend there.

Abolishing sibling preference is absurd. It would lead to a massive increase in school-running and it would be physically impossible for some parents to do both runs

I think it matters more at primary. I grew up in a town with more single sex schools than mixed, I was at a school the other side of town to my brother as did many in my school.

I know two examples. Someone I know got their kid into the oversubscribed local primary school by using his grandparents' address (the child's great-grandparents). They then got the child's elder sibling into the school on the sibling rule.

They were reported, and the local authority looked into it but didn't do anything, supposedly because they couldn't find any proof.

The other example was a local secondary school whose intake is partially selective, partially based on location and siblings. It is extremely oversubscribed. The family briefly rented a house in the road next to the school, though they never moved into it, and got the place on that basis. A couple of years later, another family applied from the same address and the school contacted the original family to tell them they'd been found out. The child was allowed to keep the place, however.

It is fraud, but no-one has ever been successfully prosecuted for it - or indeed prosecuted at all, to my knowledge. People do it because they know they can get away with it.

Just remembered - there are a couple of other places I know where the children got into the local primary school (same one as mentioned in my last post) on the social/medical rule. One of the mums admitted to me that she'd got in on the basis of PND, which she no longer suffered from, but she persuaded the GP to write the note. The other one - well, I can't prove that she got in dishonestly, but I'm fairly sure she did. She was very furtive about the whole thing, wouldn't say how the child had got in, and there is absolutely no sign of her or her child having anything that would require her to to get a place on that basis. (And she was friends with the first mum.)

The really annoying thing about these cases is that you can't really report them - data protection means the local authority won't tell you the grounds on which the child got in so you can't say "I know for certain that child doesn't suffer from X".

Ifinishedthebiscuits: "I think it's just as unfair when wealthy parents pay for barristers to win school place appeals on technicalities though, leapfrogging other parents who were higher up on the reserve list."

I agree. This is one of the things that makes the whole process so damned unfair. With secondary school admissions, the criteria for appealing are quite broad - actually, you don't need a lawyer, you just need a very articulate, well-educated set of parents who understand what is likely to go down well with an appeal panel. Meanwhile, other children high up on the waiting list don't get offered a place because some child further down has parents who know how to work the system.

Slightly concerned now that I have genuinely separated from husband, will I be subject to scrutiny? what happens if they think you're fraudulently applying? Do you just find out on allocation day, which is tomorrow?

hackmum, essentially you seem to be objecting because some people win appeals by presenting a good case. How would you remedy that? Clearly it would be wrong to abolish the appeal system.

For what it's worth, I've known of people who have won an appeal when they have presented it really badly - but the facts of their case were so strong that they would have won even if they hadn't turned up.

I wouldnt do it personally. There's too many different ways the school could find out.

Our council has just confirmed that they are removing the automatic sibling places, if the sibling lives more than 800m out of catchment when they apply.
Hopefully there will now be a glimmer of hope of people being able to get into a school that they live a few metres away from...

It's really immoral. I think that people rationalise it by saying they are taking from the council, when in fact they are taking from another child.

I think it's always going to be an uphill battle for councils. It's just too difficult to catch people (how do you distinguish between people legitimately moving and people not?). Also, the penalty is just too low. You lose your school place if you get caught? That's like telling thieves the only penalty for theft is returning the stolen property (stealing then becomes a winning strategy).]

I think there are lots of ways to fix the problem. One way is that if you move a certain distance away, no sibling get priority at that school. That sucks for legitimate movers, but frankly schools need to serve the local community.

Another thing councils can do is add some randomness to the selection process. This is more feasible in London where people live near a lot of schools. I live within 0.6 miles 6 or 7 primary schools.