Tricking the system - how to manage the 'catchment' area?

[kajoh]

Hi parents and care givers,

We are currently renting and thinking of keeping it this way until DS1 is accepted to a good primary school. For the year of primary school application we are planing to move right across the street from a school that we picked as a primary school for our DS1. Ideally we would like to be in the catchment area 4 months before January 15th application deadline and to stay there until our DS1 starts the school in September.

Are there any other parents who secured a placement in a good primary school this way? Did it work out? How long have you stayed in the rented property? Anything you would do differently?

I know this might sound crazy to some people but given that for a nursery local authorities sent us to a nursery that is 3 miles away from where we live, I am not taking any chances with the primary school.

Thank you for your advice.

Tiiggy - agree. Many faith schools, in particular, put e.g. evidence of church attendance (or baptism, for Catholic schools) higher up than distance, and no community places end up being offered in many years.

Once a child has taken up their school place, I cannot see it being removed if the family move out of the catchment. Has this ever happened?

Also look at the arrangements for siblings - I note that you refer to your child as 'DS1'.

Although some schools do give 'unconditional' sibling priority, many have revised this to give sibling priority only to siblings in catchment, or even remove the sibling link altogether because it allowed too much 'manipulation of the system' in the way that you propose. Only just over a year's notice is needed to change admissions arrangements, as well - so if another child is a couple of years younger, the sibling link that you relied on may well be removed (caught a lot of parents out locally when the secondary schoolsd id that - the effective catchment area for non-siblings grew very significantly when 'siblings out of catchment' were put below 'other children in catchment', as many parents had relied on being in catchment only for the first child to get all the others in....)

Rike: in a word, yes. Several instances over previous years in DS's school - basically because the move caused the movements of the family before application to be examined very closely, and the fact that the move had been only for admissions purposes revealed.

Now the council is very much better at flushing out potentially fraudulent applicaions BEFORE the place is given, removal of the place after admission will (hopefully) become rarer.

Another point to consider is practicality. If you are near your dc's school, especially if you can walk there, that can make your life much easier - whereas if you move away/out of catchment, you could find yourself committed to driving to and from school every day for the whole time your dc are there - and that is a huge pain, I assure you. Parking round schools can be a total nightmare, whereas the walking parent can just wander up to the school.

If you are going to rent, why not make sure that you rent somewhere suits all your needs, not just the need to be in a particular school's catchment, so that you don't need to move away once your child is in the school?

So a child has lived in an area for a year, started at school, and then the family move to another house - the school place would be taken away? I find that astonishing. Families aren't allowed to find a better house, bigger garden, move to an area they can afford to buy in? And what happens to the kid who is kicked out of school?

I've moved 3 times in the last 2 years, never seen anywhere offering more than the standard 6 month rental contract either. Lucky it doesn't happen round here.

It wouls surely not be ethical or legal to 'blacklist' an address for admissions purposes? Sure, a particular address may raise eyebrows and spark checks but blacklist?

OP I am not a fan of 'moving' very short term for school admission purposes (eg renting fake family 'home') I would think that completely unethical. But plenty of families who have the means - renters and purchasers alike - plan house moves before primary admissions. It's a shitty system but that's what we have got.....

Out of interest how have you chosen the school in question? What are the oversubscription criteria? Be wary oc basing school choice on SAT scores or ofsted reports. They do not always tell the full story.

Moving to live near a good school isn't cheating in itself though is it? That is quite different to moving temporarily while you own a house elsewhere, or renting a small flat so you have a postal address.

If I move to a house near a good school in December, apply for a school place, send my child to school the following September and then at Christmas decide to move to a bigger/better house, or one nearer my mum, or work - the LA could kick my child out of school?

I feel like there is a lot of gray area in the entire process.

In my case, I want to upgrade to larger living space so why not combine it with a move right next to a school where my LOs could go? Teacher - The sibling point was a good one. DS2 would be going to school only a year later than DS1 so it would be better not to raise any questions for one more year. Overall, I would like to work with LA or the school on these issues and have an open conversion just like with the headmaster who just advised me on moving right next to the school of interest.

We don't own nor planning to as well as in the future I don't see us living in a place smaller than 3bd (currently 2bd) so I don't think anyone could question the motivation to change the living space.

Then why are you planning to change it again after a year?

Kajoh, you are the one that has announced your intention to move to get a place at the school of your choice, and then move on as soon as the spot is taken (or now after a year or two, having heard advice)

Why are you still talking as if this is a temporary home?

Well, if your motivation is primarily to increase your living space, the mention of 'trickery' in your thread title is a bit misleading.

Oh god, this has really worried me. We have had our house on the market since january, we have just put it for rent. We had always planned to move to DHs home town (we are in eastbourne and are moving to hastings) around 2017 but thought it would be unfair to move DD after a couple of years so decided to bring it forward so that we could be in our new place for primary applications in january. We are moving for a variety of reasons, none of which are school related. Are they going to think we've moved just to get into a good school ? Because this isnt the case and in fact, none of the schools over there suit us as much as our number one choice here.

Nige, you'll be fine. You are moving to dh's home town and plan to be there for good.

OP it sounds from your latest post that you're backtracking and have hopefully realised that it would be dishonest to try and cheat the system.

Unfortunately the fact that many people do act dishonestly is making genuine people who need to move house for other reasons very worried as can be seen from a couple of posters on this thread.

I used 'tricking' to get the attention for the topic. As you can see I have no idea how these things work in the UK. We are a family of expatriates hence also the 'temporary' approach to the living arangement. ( and by temporary I mean 5,10 or 20 years - enough to be worried about sending our little ones to school in London but no enough to buy a property)

That said, my top priority will be to find a rental house close to the primary school of choice. In this sense I don't feel like I am doing anything else than other parents. Given all your great advise it looks like I should look for a place where I want to stay for longer which makes total sense.

Thank you.

but do check the admissions criteria... my friend lives 4 houses further away from school than me (250 yards from the school gates) and did not get her eldest daughter into our local school because siblings filled up ALL the places in 2005 (2000/01 were high birth years).

So a child has lived in an area for a year, started at school, and then the family move to another house - the school place would be taken away

There is a risk that would happen if the second move was to an address which would not have got you a place at the school. If, after looking at the evidence, the LA think the first move was purely for the purposes of getting a place at a popular school the child's place could be taken away even after they have started school. The LA don't have to prove that was the family's motivation. There is therefore a risk they will get it wrong and class an innocent move as fraudulent, although such instances seem to be rare.

Also, do check catchment areas. We moved house (because of ds's job) when ds1 was 1 year old. We didn't really think about schools, apart from noticing that there was a primary school opposite the top of our road - literally 1.5 minutes walk from my front gate - and we were very shocked to find that, despite our proximity, we weren't in catchment!

Apparently, because the school was so popular, the local authority had decided to slice off some of the catchment area, and transfer it to another school - and for some obscure reason, instead of taking a slice off the edge of the catchment area nearest to the other school, they took a wedge which centred on the original school.

We appealed, mainly because of the proximity - I believed it would be absolutely ridiculous for me to have to walk past the school I could see from my front door, in order to get to another school, just because of a daft catchment area division - and we won our appeal.

But for ds2 and ds3, we didn't have guaranteed places, because they were out-of-catchment siblings. They did get places, but it was a lot of stress.

To answer your original question, if you are moving house, it makes perfect sense to look at schools, and make sure you are in catchment for a school you like.

That is what we have done when we have moved house (or considered moving house) since the house move described above. We moved to Scotland 5 years ago, and we did look first at schools - finding good schools for the dses was our priority - and when we found a senior school with an excellent reputation that we believed would best suit the boys, we went out that same day (we were on a house- and school-hunting visit to the area) and rented a house in catchment for that school. We made it clear to the school that, although it was a 6 month rental, that was not because we wanted to trick our way into the school, but because we wanted a rented house whilst we sold our house in Essex and house hunted for a house to buy in catchment.

We could have submitted an out-of-area request, but as there was only one place left in ds1's year, we decided to go for broke and rent the house in catchment - after all, we were only renting a few weeks earlier than would have had to anyway.

New build developments may not be in the catchment area of the "obvious local" school.

But equally few schools in England have fixed catchment areas any more - most work with radial distance from school.

The headmaster advised you to do this? . I think you may have misunderstood; I would assume he meant was the way to "manage" the catchment problem was to make sure you were in catchment.

Not read whole thread.
You need to read the rules around this, which relate to your local authority, and the particular school.
If you are within the rules you will be fine, if not then not.
People who live in other area will have potentially totally different rules - their advice may very well be totally irrelevant for where you live.
My borough has it all on their website so I would recommend some research.
That's it really.