Others lying to get dc into school you live closer to

[Hathor]

What do you do if you find out about people lying about where they live to get their dc into the school you want your dc to attend, and their dc offered a place when yours is not?
Ignore? Report? What is the chance of any action?

If you report it then I would be very surprised if no action were to be taken. I would expect the school to withdraw the offer and then offer the place to the next child on the waiting list.

They will withdraw the place if they have good reason to believe that the person has lied.

I would report it to the local authority and I think they would with draw the place

Anyone know who you report to? Not sure about this as obv know the family. Would it be anonymous?

Report it to the admissions team at your LA. They should investigate. The family concerned should not be told that you have reported them.

Do it asap as there it woud be very unfair on the child to actaully start at tehe school and then be withdrawn.

Would you report it: yes or no?
Has anyone experienced this situation?

I only have experience from previously working in admissions. Sometimes people reported anonymously, sometimes they gave us names. It was always taken very seriuosly and luckily most were reported before places were offered, but I did have experience of places being withdrawn once the children had started, which was very sad. I'm not syre if this is still allowed as it was some years ago.

I would report to the admissions authrority with as much information as possible. I would have no hesitation in doing this as they have taken a place from a family who has played by the rules and been denied their rightful place.

Please report this if you are confident of the information. I have done quite a few appeals where the appealant says but we know people cheated. Well as an appeal panel we can do nothing about that, it is the admission manager at the LA that needs to know. And they will do something about it.

Withdrawing a place once the child has started at school is still allowed if the parents have obtained the place fraudulently. However, it is clearly better if the offer is withdrawn before the start of the September term.

I would report it. They have cheated someone out of a place.

I am surprised at the responses here purely because more or less exactly the same question was asked either one or 2 years ago, and there was outrage that the DC should in any way be inconvenienced by having their dodgily-obtained school place rescinded.

There was a real feeling here that it wasn't fair to 'punish' the DC as a result of their parents' duplicity/ sharp practise, what ever.

It goes to show that the responses are entirely dependent on a current 'mood' feel here on MN.

FWIW, I'd report it too. Too much rides on getting a suitable secondary place, even within the rules! AND, wheeling out my inner fascist, personally I feel that if you move out of catchment for an over subscribed school you should have to move your DC out of that school at the end of their current Key Stage, too. That would bring that 'dodgy renter' problem under control!

Just re-reading the OP, the people concerned must have been very canny to get away with it! Unless the LEA don't do checks (and the parents know they don't!). Where we live the secondary (or the LEA admissions team, should I say) do check your admission address against the one your local primary has been given, for instance. Avoids the 'grandma's address' thing.

I wasn't here two years ago but I would have said the same thing then. It is entirely wrong to cheat someone else's child out of a place by lying.

Yes, it is exactly the "grandma's address" thing. They did live there at one point, but not when the applications went in and now they are outside the catchment.

I suspect they'd need to show evidence of living in catchment when the application went in. We had to be prepared to show our rental agreement and council tax bill. And to be aware that they would ask the primary which address they used for our DC!

erebus. I think it is far more likely to be that the response is different because different people happen to have replied and they happen to have different opinions.

I don't think there is a blanket mumsnet 'mood', any more than there is a uniform mumsnet opinion.

fwiw, I think that if you know someone has lied to get a place to which they would not otherwise be entitled, then it is perfectly understandable for them to be reported.

I also think that I can understand why parents lie. It may not be right and it is certainly not legal, but I understand that they are doing it because they are desperate to get the best school for their child. I think that some parents are not able to accept second best for their child in the name of fair play.

Interesting about asking the primary school about the address - simple cheap and and mostly effective. It would certain,y have caught out someone I know who lied to get their DC into a secondary near us.

Hecate, I understand what you're saying but I was merely commenting how sometimes threads topics that you just know did 'go off' previously (having followed them!), with loads of MN deleting as things got so polarised then might be effectively re-posted again some time later with barely a murmur as everyone agrees with the OP!

It's just that I distinctly remember this coming up and the over-arching response mood was 'If they can get away with it, it's fine/every parent must do whatever it takes to nail that school place'. I was rather

Maybe we've all grown up a bit?!