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?)

user You haven't read the thread at all have you? Try reading any of Tiggygates posts. You are out of date and wrong.

Cody38. How on earth do you square what you're doing with sending your child(ren) to a religious school? Let's hope the school provides them with the moral code missing from their home life.

Anyway here is the example I mentioned a couple of times upthread. (and the trip from her home to Darrell, the very good school that she was eventually allocated , from her temporary address would only take 30 minutes if you crawled on your hands and knees) She lost her legal case because she had quite clearly moved to her parent's address days before the application deadline and this sort of entitled hissy fit, with the stress, if genuine, she has inflicted on her own child, is presumably seen as justified by some on this thread?www.standard.co.uk/news/mother-claims-child-cruelty-in-row-over-daughter-s-school-place-9151427.html

www.standard.co.uk/news/mother-claims-child-cruelty-in-row-over-daughter-s-school-place-9151427.html

Rainbow to be fair to User it sounds like she was the child in that situation and it was something her parents did. Other than that though, I agree with you and disagree with her justifications. Just wanted to clarify.

whatwould I'm glad she lost the legal case, entitled or what. And I can't see how the LA was any more guilty of child cruelty than she was

That governor should know better. How entitled?! And when caught
out, rather than just being sheepish at having tried it on and failed, fancy trying to take a legal case against them for child cruelty. Mind boggling!

Or they could have got in On Appeal. I didn't live in the catchment area for the school my son went to, he wasn't offered a place first time round, I appealed and he was offered a place!

It's nothing to do with you so mind your own!

Interesting that so many that clearly have not read the thread come out with exactly the same rhetoric "mind your own". Unless you are going to live in a cave and only venture out to gun down a few animals / people to meet your needs then being a member of society means that we none of us should just mind our own and should call out selfish and anti social behaviour that causes harm to others.

Of course there is no issue if the child got in on appeal but as has been pointed out in detail on this thread fradulant admissions have been and could be again a problem that has caused a lot of distress to families who lose a place in their local school as a result. Councils consider it a major issue and that if people get away with it will grow, to the extent that they go to great lengths to police it. It is an issue of anti social, and immoral behaviour so we should do what we can to help Councils to act on behalf of the interests of the majority. If our suspicions are incorrect there is no problem, the Council can easily check, the family will be none the wiser. If they are found out they have only themselves to blame for seeking unfair advantage.

If thete is a sibling. There may not be.....

tiggytape fair enough

prh47bridge and tiggytape, is there a common set of legislation underpinning council rules on this sort of thing? Because where I live, a friend was told directly by the council that as long as she was genuinely living at a property at the time of application, then a short-term rental just for the purposes of school applications was totally fine by them. I was really shocked by this and wondered about challenging the policy, but wasn't sure if there was a leg to stand on. My suspicion is that there really isn't much policing of whether applications are genuine or not. I certainly know by hearsay of a fair few cases where people have used dodgy addresses to get in, and seem quite happy to be open about it. I suppose that's what you get when it's known that enforcement is lax, but it's pretty shocking as there is a chronic shortage of places locally (not London, an hour away). Is evidence of lax policing of admissions even something that an appeal panel might take into account?

a friend was told directly by the council that as long as she was genuinely living at a property at the time of application, then a short-term rental just for the purposes of school applications was totally fine by them.
How do you suggest the council determine intent? Lie detector test?

Pizza, it is not for the council to determine intent, but for the family to prove that they have NOT moved purely for the purposes of school admissions. The burden of proof is on the family, not the council.

Quote from prh

"if a family really do have some genuine reason for living in a rented home whilst owning another, the onus is on them to explain it and to take it to appeal if they cannot get the council to agree to use the rented address."

That is the basic principle in all cases - it is not for the council to determine whether a family is acting fraudulently, rather for the family to provide sifficient evidence that they are NOT acting fraudulently.

Tbh, in places with good systems, most cases are weeded out before places are ever offered.

Tiggytape thanks, but the situation you describe is exactly what I am taking about. My friend was told in no uncertain terms that if she wanted to rent another house in catchment, despite owning one just out of catchment, that was totally fine as long as she was actually living at the rental address. This is a close friend, I'm not just going by 'i heard a friend of a friend was told blabla' - because it sounded so unlikely, she queried very directly whether a short-term let specifically for school application purposes was allowed (in their case, in order to move up the waiting list after allocations), and was told that it was. Now it may have been the official she spoke to misstating the rules, but my query was whether hypothetically a council could decide that that genuinely was actually ok, or whether there is some national code they are contravening.

Prh47bridge thank you - I feared as much. In a biggish city setting once you get to no.,1 on a waiting list you are pretty much assured of a place at a preferred school anyway, because of massive population movement, so a much more likely appeal is from a point much further down the waiting list. Unfortunately because of attitudes like those on this thread, there's been no incentive for councils to crack down. While I'd have no qualms reporting direct suspicions of fraud, like the op, second hand gossip does feel a bit distant in terms of making accusations!

Thanks prh. Renting while owning another property was what I was talking about.

So many people (not just in this thread) seem to thing it's within the rules as long as you move in at the point of admissions I was beginning to doubt myself.

Councils have some means of verifying applicants. Some use council tax documents and some don't. It seems some don't carry out any matter of course checks or ask for any evidence of address.
I guess resources are limited and checking has to be a method which is easy and cheap to administer. When easy and cheap methods are used, people will be able to slip through the net sometimes.
And it's because of the limited tools at the council's disposal in the first round of applications, that they rely on and need people to have their wits about them and report suspicions. They can then look into them more fully. I guess that in some areas where places are in big demand, there is a culture of knowing that people get reported and places taken away and this acts as a detterant, but in other areas people do t know they can report a suspicion or have never heard of anyone being followed up or places taken away. As has been said, I guess that when lots of people don't get their choice, pressure to step up checks and involvement from parents reporting suspicions increases....but that takes a couple of years at least for the benefits to work through - a lag, which doesn't help victims of fraud before the system starts to work better.
And I think a problem remains that fraudsters do still sometimes get away with it. The fact that if a term has passed before the fraud is reported, the chance of the place being removed is very small. This means that people do get away with it which is disappointing. And of course lots of fraudsters don't blab to all and sundry about their cheating the system...they keep quiet and can slip under the radar, especially when as we see on this thread, lots of people are so loathe to report anything at all, however certain they are.

I suspect the resistance to reporting serious suspicions, even in the face of pretty certain knowledge is stronger in working class areas. In more middle class areas where schooling is highly highly valued and people are even more desperate to get their kids into the best schools, the sense of outrage at people cheating the system is greater and people are more willing to report concerns. Not being willing to report crimes of all sorts,mis often associated with having a less good relationship with authority - seeing the authority as a sometime enemy, and any kind of reporting as 'grassing' which is totally unacceptable, no matter what the crime is. Also, in some areas there is a less strong and clear understanding of the admissions criteria in the first place, and their necessity. People often think that those who qualify for the places don't deserve them or only get them because they have money, so don't support the criteria in the same way and the middle classes might do, and in not supporting the criteria, are less affronted by cheating over the criteria, because they haven't bought into the system to start with. In some communities, you just do whatever you need to do, however shady, just to get by and you accept that others do this too. I think this is the approach some people on this thread take to the fraudsters - they just think the cheats are doing the best for their kids and the means justify the ends...and in many cases, are a little envious of those who have been brave enough to defraud the system. They see the parents who defraud as victims of a system that wouldn't give them the place, so see the system itself as driving fraudsters to their actions - removing the responsibility from the cheats. It's a bizarre logic, but one I think many people follow. What they don't think about is the true victims -because they are faceless and so more difficult to think about.

This thread has shown how strongly many people will resist any involvement in anything to do with other people, even when wrong is clear. It shows how people talk themesleves out of action and how individualistic society is. The arguments for it are usually deeply flawed and illogical, but people clearly have a strong feeling against reporting suspisions,e vein if they can't adequately justify these feelings. It's depressing.

Maryz Some school's certainly like it. On some school applications, the parents occupations are asked for. Why do people think this is?!?!?!?!!!