Any real moral difference between a short term let for admission purposes or permanently moving

[OhDearConfused]

Question says it all really.

A short term let or a more permanent move, in either case to get you into catchment for admissions at a popular school, still has the effect of reducing the catchment area, increasing housing prices, disadvantaging the poor, and so on.

Is there a real difference?

Struggling with this at the moment, as in catchment for a not-particularly-attractive school, when many others are doing one or the other to get into another school a little further away.

Just wondering what other's views are?

I have been thinking more about this.

I think it's only really a question of a very flawed system in the first place.

Any system that favours 'buying your way in' is wrong, in terms of education all our children are entitled to have the same opportunities and quality.

I think this argument needs to begin in a different place altogether. Schools need to be equalised. Somehow.

You see it's the right/left wing argument only at a different stage...once you start to find in a given situation that there ISN'T enough to go round, people will realise that what there is needs sharing out fairly.

Even richer people can't always buy their way into a good state school...they end up paying for private. The height of inequality for our children.

I think private schools need to go, and things need to be evened out. At the heart of a good education is not money. It is people who know and understand children and how to teach them. THAT is your holy grail. that's what needs sharing out so that every school is a good school.

I mean it's like if suddenly there was no bread. Anywhere. Only a few places, far and wide, what would it matter if you were a city banker and had a million pound bonus...it couldn't buy you bread. Then the bankers would be in uproar that they were not getting any more bread than the poor people, and something would be done to put a stop to this awful equality. Meanwhile I guess some people would just cheat and push in.

I've no idea what I'm saying btw so sorry if that makes no sense whatsoever...it's early.

Morally indefensible. And, bottom line for me, it would mean that your child would have to lie, and continue to lie. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And good and bad schools are largely a matter of perception. With a very few exceptions, a well supported child will do well wherever thy go, and q badly supported child won't. The extraordinary panic about schools is a particular form of modern insanity.

What about those of us who struggle to support our own children properly and need the school to be a good one?

Anyway it's not necessarily true seeker...you often find a well supported child being moved out of a poor school due to the way that school handles stuff like bullying etc.

I don't panic about good and bad school places despite knowing ds may well not pass the 11 plus...he's dyslexic...not being adequately supported by school in terms of this, or me probably...yet I know if he doesn't make it, and there are awful schools here if he doesn't, I will be prepared to teach him at home whatever it takes.

I won't send him somewhere shit. And there ARE shit schools.

"... either way it means that Child A due to lack of money (compared to child B) loses out on a place. "

You could argue that any one of the children who was not born within catchment has caused Child A to lose out though.

Moving permanently into catchment is legitimate.
Short term renting is cheating.

As an aside, scrapping private schools won't "even things out".

It just could be said that personally, in the flawed arena that is Life, I am sort of glad that there IS something I can do to get my DCs into what I perceive to be a good school.

We did the school catchment move, from one 'permanent' renter to another, now we have bought in catchment, paying the £30-40k premium it costs around here. We could move out again now in that DS2 has his place enshrined at the secondary for next Sept but we won't because we want the boys to have local friends (having not had that from R to Y6 for DS1 as our local school was always full so we had to send him further away, and the 'fear', whilst renting of getting 60 days notice to relocate again). The day we moved in I said to DH 'right, this it home for at least 7 years' (when DS2 leaves the secondary), but I wouldn't rule out leaving after those years to free up some cash and go more rural.

One might say we're 'lucky' to be able to afford the premium but I'd say a) you can buy cheaper and smaller in this catchment, b) neither of us are on very good wages but we had our DCs later in life when we were better set up, and c) it was what we were prepared to do.

FWIW I do tire of some usually London types who go to London in their 20s, get married, are determined to stay in London for the benefits that brings them, buy what they can afford, often is way less than salubrious areas, have kids- then moan that the local school isn't 'fab'. And never has been.

!!" is there a moral difference between renting for a short tiome to get a place and moving into an area".

Of course there bloody is!! One is frankly dishonest....... depends how low in the gutter your morals lie!

CustardCake, quite often the people that do move closer to the school to guarantee a place are those who started out on the fringes themselves. Or they live just outside the catchment boundary. Either way, they are still fighting for a place in their local school. If not, certainly of their local schools.

I maintain that it is not stealing. Stealing involves taking something that is already owned by a person. When it comes to school places, every child will get given a school place somewhere, so the child that has been 'stolen' from will still end up with a school place, and the place that may have come to be theirs, was never something that belonged to them. Children are allocated places all at the same time, they don't get given them only to have them 'stolen' away by someone that has moved closer to the school.

Every year it's about the luck of the drew of those children that live on the outskirts of a catchment to a good school. Some years they would get a place, some years they wouldn't, regardless of anyone deliberately cheating the system.

Lurkers, while I agree with the sentiment of your post, I disagree that all well supported children will do well. And I disagree that the Holy Grail is good teachers. I think it's down to good parenting. A good teacher that is up against an unsupported child who has parents with a bad attitude towards parenting has a much much harder job to do. No matter how passionate s/he is about the job.

A well supported child might be ok wherever they go, but what if they are clever and not very well supported because as much as the family want to be supportive, they have another disabled family member to consider. The well supported child could be bullied into being miserable at school and therefore not doing as well as they could have done. A well supported but easily led child could flourish in an environmemt where all the children want to achieve, but put them in a school where a large number of the children aren't bothered about their education because of their parent's attitude, and they could start to have that bad attitude rub off on them.

And it's not about just doing ok. It about achieveing maximum potential. All schools should be able to provide this, but the fact remains that they don't. Bad teaching is a factor, but bad parenting is a bigger one.

That is why people do this. I think some of my reasons above, do justify cheating the system personally. You only get one chance with your child's education, and it does matter where they go to school, even if they are well supported.

So, by your reasoning, Maryz, I am morally superior because I released the place my child was offered at the good state comprehensive and sent him private. A starving child got in instead.

And no, I don't actually believe that and, obviously, that is not why we made the choice we did. However, as the local comp has unfair admissions criteria, I did see the direct result of children pulling out - friends at school were checking the waiting lists weekly in a panic as their child crept slowly up to the hallowed position of being admitted.

Slave, I'm not sure why you are arguing with me on the p[oint of whether a well supported child will always do well despite the school...it was Seeker who said that. I disagreed.

No harm is done that wouldn't be done anyway, it's just about which child that happens to. Out of two children that want one place, one child is going to miss out no matter what.

I know it's not nice, and that's why all schools need to be better, but I suspect there's not a huge amount that can be done to improve the standard of parent's attitudes in some areas, so this horrible situation will always exist to some degree.

But like I said, out of two well supported children who both want the same place, one is always going to miss out.

But that's a nonsense. If nobody "cheats" then more people on the outskirts of a catchment zone will get a place.

It's not a nonsense at all. More people on the outskirts could get a place on a good year if nobody cheated, but equally, they could be beaten by sibling places and other children whose families have lived closer to the school for years.

So there could be no one cheating, and those on the outskirts still might not get a place. Therfore, the place is not theirs, and so cannot be stolen.

Sorry Lurkers. You are right, I'm getting confused, and I apologise

Where do we put the knife carrying kids?

I don't think they are the fault of the teachers. Where do we put failing children from failing families...this is the urgent question. And how do we stop those families failing in the first place.

I don't know the answers. It's the children's behaviour in the worse schools round here which puts me off. I daresay there are some excellent teachers in those schools, and some who can't handle it. Why should they handle it though when they are up against kids with weapons?

No one can handle those children and I don't want my child to be around them. But I wouldn't go trying to trick the system to facilitate that. I'd teach him at home. I'd find a way that didn't involve making sure someone else's kid ended up in the shite school by nefarious means.

That's like pushing your way onto the last lifeboat by pretending you're in desperate need...because 'someone else would have if I hadn't'.

It's alright Slaves, I keep doing it myself

That school place that you take for your child by fiddling the system would have gone to another child. Therefore you have taken that child's place.

That doesn't make it stealing. One child doesn't deserve it any more than any other child. The place I could have got at a different school (albeit one I didn't want) will also now go to another child.

That's like going to a party where there are 50 people and 40 cans of beer. The people that got the beer just got lucky, got there earlier, made their way to the kitchen quicker, whatever. The beer was free to everyone, they all had equal right to it. Those that got it didn't steal it from those that didn't, because they had as much right to it as anyone else. And those that didn't get beer got something else instead because they were still catered for. They might have prefered beer, but they still got what they had a right to.

Crap analogy, but you know what I mean (I hope)!