to consider reporting this family for having lied to the school?

[mnbvcx445566]

Two parents and one child. They live nowhere near the primary state school they applied for and got into. I think - am pretty sure - they used a different address to the one they live at.
School very sought after. Shall I report them?

I've looked carefully into myself and this is what I think:

1- I am not jealous. If I had the chance to do the same I would not. I would like my child to go to a great state school so they are lucky for that but I would not play the way they did.

2- If I report them the child will have problems at school (? don't quite know what happens in those cases). The parents might have a breakdown or something having to face the backlash. Obviously they have brains and made their choice and would only pay the consequences of their actions but - I - would have precipitated the situation by reporting them. Maybe the system is so fucked anyway that what they did is not that big of a deal. Surely the school should have done 1000 checks before awarding places so there might be something I do not know. What I do know is that they live miles from that school, which has a very very small catchment area.

3- I should report them because if my child did not get into that school 'legally' I would despise people who took advantage of a loophole and took 'my child's place'.

WWYD?

I am a long-time poster/user but I have opened a different account as I do not want to be recognised. (If I do not want to face them and tell them that they are committing an illegal/immoral action does it mean that I am in the wrong thinking of calling the school anonymously?)

Yes, and the more we say 'turn a blind eye' / 'nobody suffers' / 'think of the child who has started school' / 'mind your own business' the worse it gets.

Local experience really does show that a combination of parent / community reporting and active behind-the-scenes screening does significantly reduce both actual fraud and the very damaging perception that 'the system is there to be played'.

If u want to do right by people volunteer to help those that need it

Yes, by volunteering information to help those in need whose places have been stolen......

My last post. I'm encouraged by lots of good advice on this thread and dismayed by the selfishness and inward lookingness of people only interested in their own.

School fraud happens. We all know it does.
In individual, specific cases it is hard to be entirely sure, which is why the council asks people to simply report concerns. That is all. They then use their database to see if being adopted or SEN or other factors mean there is no need to even investigate.

Forget this individual case of Ops, where loads of people have said 'butt out' and think instead about the many situations that happen every year. What about if through chat over the weeks and months in the playground you heard that someone was using a temporary or fake address for a school application or had kept their out of catchment home to move back to shortly and hgad rented temporarily, which isn't allowed. Would you report your suspicion? Its not your child that will lose out but you know that it is very tight for all local children to even get in.
Do you decide its not your business, that you don't know 100% or that these are kids who won't get a place that you don't know about so don't give a toss about.or do you simply email the council and state you have a concern which they might wish to consider? Wouldn't you be pleased if someone doing this meant you kid next time round gets the place they are entitled to?

Yes, by volunteering information to help those in need whose places have been stole

People do need to keep using that word. Stolen. Theft.

You may not be able to physically see it

You don't see smashed windows and an empty spot on the cabinet

But it's one of the more serious thefts.

You cab replace an x box

You can get an upgrade on your phone

Cancel your cards.

Claim on your insurance for the car

What you can't do is replace the life a child never gets to have, friends they never had a chance to meet.

The sports facilities they didn't get to use

And the time they waste on the bus.

None of that can be replaced. Juat because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening

How much thought and energy does it take to fire off a quick e-mail to the team responsible for investigating admissions fraud telling them what you know about their addresses.

She's shocked that someone would consider reporting, but she understands why someone would fib. Which seems very strange to me

There are lots of people like her on MN, unfortunately.

Report. It's the right thing to do. An email is all there'll be to it afaik.

Could have been a low birth rate year though? Fewer applicants...

@cantkeepawayforever you are right, to a certain point. A lot depends on the situation. If you report what you think is some kind of abuse, which is investigated and proven to be false, there will still be a grey cloud over the reported family, (and I would imagine the reporter would feel horrible) but as you say, not doing anything leads to incidents like baby p.

But this is abuse of the system, not abuse of a person.

As I said, if the op is that upset/annoyed/bothered by the situation, then she needs to report it to the local council/lea and then leave it with them, because there are many, many reasons why certain children are accepted into a school out of their catchment area.
(My own kids were accepted into a primary school three miles away from where we lived - a very good village school with sought after places - because a place was available in their years (1 and 4), we moved into the area from over 100 miles away, it was a faith school, they came from a failing school and needed a good new base to start from, and were not long off the looked after register following adoption)

My sister said 'well you do anything for your children' about this sort of thing. My 'anything' doesn't include lying, cheating or fraud.

Not going to read all 26 pages! But this post pissed me right of. U say your not jealous???? So wtf is the problem??? Perhaps they are moving into area? Or have family that go to the school? Perhaps the child has special needs that only this school offers support on! Sounds to me your one of those busy bodies standing at school gate judging every parent!!!

Maybe you should rtft Batsh It's 26 pages after all

Far easier to just steam in with a tirade of punctuation marks, rather than actually rtft.

Lol, why thank you Mary for explaining my thoughts. If you had cut and pasted properly you’d have shown I said I also had sympathy for the child who lost their place and empathy for the parents who lied to get their kid a better education. Sigh.

And yes there are lots of us who would not report someone for simply living out of the catchment area. Nothing more nothing less. And yes I think it’s horribly sad some people on here would. Very sad indeed.

Why are you pretending g it's just about beimg out of catchment..

It's a combination of things

Let me ask one more question. I've been told today that it's common for parents to move into the area when they are waiting for the offer and then move out again once they got it. It's because of this practice that catchment areas for really sought after schools keep shrinking officially but in reality they keep widening because of families moving out. Is this more accepted by LA than simply using a bogus address? In the case im talking about, if there was fraud, it would be quite difficult to prove it given that the house is theirs, the house was emptied prior to the offers being made, and no one can really prove that this family was not living there, say, on January 23rd when the offer was made and for the following two months (which they didn't. They have been on my part of the world for the past 3 years, every month, of that I'm sure). If they go by deeds and council tax they would have both and could say that they were there at the time in which the offers were made and moved out afterwards.
Is that correct?

There are no siblings
There are no grandparents
I saw the child's mother pregnant and have been to the hospital when she gave birth.
I can confidently say that there are no sc given that all the other private schools they applied for have no sn provisions.
There have been conversations that make me think they've done it.

Given that if the practice is so widespread I would be singling out this family's behaviour, would it make sense instead to call LA/school that I'm aware of the fact that this is a common practice and that I think they should carefully review their policies if they want to make sure due and fair process is obtained?

No I really don't think you should report them. You don't know their circumstances & you can't 'know' no matter how much you think you do.
I think you're putting too much energy into it. I would focus on your child & the education you can help her with.

Thanks Maryz for finding what Bluntness said originally - I funnily enough had better things to do with my evening that wade through a thread I'd already read. And I was right, it doesn't explain anything.

Because you don't actually have sympathy for the child who lost their place through fraud, Bluntness, not really - because you're quite happy for them to have to continue, potentially, taking 2 buses across town, each way every day, and needlessly attending breakfast and after-school club, for the entirety of their primary schooling. I can tell you where I'd want to stick your 'sympathy' if I were that family. I still don't understand how you can decide that it's the child whose parents lied and cheated (and live miles away from school) that gets to keep their place, rather than the one who has been unfairly pitched into a random school at the other end of town. And more than that, that somebody deciding that this is morally Not On and needs redressing is 'sad'?!

My child is sorted thank you. He's in bed now and has eaten a nice and healthy dinner. No coughs or colds so he will go off to school tomorrow. My husband is happily reading next to me, the dog is snoring, the laundry has been done and the meals planned.
I'm now sitting down and getting to learn more about the school system and about people's perceptions of what is fair and what is not. After all I will have to navigate it for the next ten years at least and I have understood that there are so many things I don't know and so many people who will be willing to look the other way whilst someone kicks my child out of the way.
I thought it was one possible case, but given the number of comments here telling me to mmob and that I'm a pretty bad person I have realised that I will get many more like this possible case on my child's path.

Am amazed at the amount of posters who seeing the thread is at 26 pages decide they can't be bothered to RTFT but pile in with their views - obviously confident that no-one else in the previous 26 pages would have come close to their searing insight into the issue at hand...

But to the OP - I'd report... as Giles has so valiantly tried to make the point - with the other options for priority admissions exhausted (saving unknown SN - but noting OP's views on likelihood of this) then distance seems an anomaly.

Apologies, it may have been Tiggy or someone else who made the excellent point that this isn't a victimless crime - I think it was in response to the poster who announced they'd fraudulently accessed stolen a school place by using grandparent's address.

And to repeat previous counters to the MYOB argument -where does this line stop... MYOB because your child not affected, MYOB because your neighbourhood not affected, MYOB because you're alright Jack, MYOB because a bit of theft is understandable, MYOB because tax evasion is ok, MYOB because you're not being hit, MYOB because your race/gender is not being discriminated.... And yes - before anyone posts, I'm not saying these are directly analogous but I'm saying (as pp have too) - surely there is a spectrum of (in)justice/(in)equality/(un)fairness that needs to be challenged. I'd like to think I teach/model this to my DD not that its ok to turn a blind eye because we're not directly affected.

They shouldn't treat it more favourably, todayMoving for the sole purpose of gaining admission to a school is still against the rules. It's possible that the LA would be able to find evidence that they had moved from house A to B for the necessary period of time and then back to A.

If they are do they will treat that as a fraudulent application. Unless they can prove there was a reason why they did that that doesn't involve school admissions.

Got it, thank you.

Today,

Admissions policies are being increasingly carefully worded to try to rule that sort of thing out.

Round here if the family continued to own a house elsewhere (out of the catchment, not 100s of miles away), then the house elsewhere would be treated as their address for admissions purposes.

If a move was from 1 rental to another, but the house in catchment was obviously unsuitable for the family concerned, then that would be very significantly investigated to see whether e.g. the rental was very short term and could not be regarded as the family's real address.

If the family actually sold up, moved to a family house in catchment, then sold again and moved out again to a third property, that would normally be regarded as a 'real' move, though the difference between address while at primary, address on application, and address when arriving at secondary would tend to be flagged and investigated.

Basically, any move shortly before applications open, and any move shortly afterwards, tends to be looked at very closely. It is up to the applicant to prove that they own / rent the house in good faith, not purely for admissions purposes, not for the LA to prove fraud.

Have you namechanged again OP?

How would the OP report it without them knowing it was her?