Graveney - Renting in catchment for admissions purposes

[StockwellLiving]

I am thinking about renting for a 12 month period or so from this summer to cover up to beginning of Y7 for DD in Sept 2013. And then moving back out.

I know (most people think) renting is wrong (and often discussed here). I actually also think its wrong, but I also know others do it (and not sure why we should be the only one not "playing the game", and I do want to avoid my local catchment school (have no religion, no money (for indies), average DD with no chance of her passing selection tests).

I am not starting this thread to get into the rights and wrongs of it - I only want to ask the very specific question: Do "renters" get caught and are places actually withdrawn?

I am asking about Graveney, not in general. I know from threads on MN that some LAs do try and look into short-term renting. But somehow I think that this particular school and this particular LA don't really care (happy to have aspirational middle classes moving into catchment) ...... so do they look into whether the rental is permanent or not, whether the renters have an owned (proper) home (rented out for a year)

Just wondering as it seems its increasingly popular to do this ....

tiggy I know (we all know) people who own a house and also have an investment property. If you move to house B (say, renting whilst shopping around or saving for the "catchment premium" :)) and keep house A (and rent that out as investment property) and do all the things to make your address house B, ie a genuine move (whether it is permanent or not really then does turn on the intention at the time - which a council can never find out). I know that is not OP's position, but the criteria you are describing also captures this type of person genuinely moving who also keeps the old place.

Good point re putting the onus on the applicant, though, I suspect this is the only solution.

Same type of thought twoterrors at the same time!

Almost exactly same thought!

Thing is, putting the onus on the applicant just seems to me to be back to the most plausible liars, the people that think far ahead about how to cheat (a family of five, say, moving into catchment a good year ahead of time, and staying say till oldest in year 8, next four children can occupy spaces for next oooh 15 years perhaps?), people that can play the system still get to play it?

I'd be interested in an example of the wording where councils have attempted to specify what a permanent address is other than on utilities, council tax etc etc.

twoterrors,

Our local 'desirable' school
a) checks address on application, address known by primary school, address on entry to the school and address at Easter of Year 7. Any discrepancies create a query...and quite a lot of people don't make it through the screening, some leaving mid-way through Year 7..
b) removed its sibling priority (and replaced it with 'siblings in catchment only') with the minimum consultation period required by law....
I notice that it's tweaked its admissions criteria again a bit this year - basically it seems to aim to create a climate of sufficient uncertainty that deciding how to play the system too far in advance conveys little advantage.

Scrapping the siblings rule will sort out an awful lot of this corrupt jostling for position.

I can see virtually NO argument for siblings getting an automatic place at any secondary school.

Bibbity - would you not want your dcs to attend the same school? My ds' started primary and we then moved to a bigger house which as the crow flies was about a mile away from the school (our old house was 0.9 miles away). The house we are in now is just out of catchment but due to being a different area, houses were cheaper hence as being able to move. As the sibling rule applied my dd got in but she wouldn't if she did not have any siblings. If the 'sibling in catchment' rule applied, then people would be loathe to move (other than in their immediate area). It would have been a nightmare for me to have dcs at different schools in primary (in secondary a completely different story).

My dc will not be going to the same school - they are not the same sex and we do not have the choice in my neck of the woods. If my dc can manage then I don't see why everyone else's shouldn't.

Angel, we had children a couple of streets away from their nearest school having to travel a few miles instead because so many places were taken by siblings whose parents moved somewhere nicer once their pfb was safely in their chosen primary.

It caused a lot of resentment. The rules have changed now and are much fairer; usual looked after rule, in catchment sibs, catchment non-sibs, out-of-catchment.

At secondary it should confer no advantage at all -why on earth should it?

Sorry Angel, I see you acknowledge the difference between primary and secondary

I am in a tricky position. I have just returned from London where I attempted to rent a house.
The estate agents had bugger all to show me because 'a lot of people have rented them out in order to have an address to get their children into a decent school'.
IMO, that is immoral. I did manage to find one house and, fingers crossed it is ours. I now have the unenviable job of finding a school for my DD.
She is 11 and will go into seniors this year.

It is difficult re: siblings. I think I am still leaning towards the sibling rule should apply for primary but not secondary. As per my example, we had to move (2 bed house for 5 of us) but if we had stayed in the 'correct' area, would have cost us an addt 20K. As for the OP's initial question, if she looks at ripsi's comments, she may see the unfairness. However, what she's asking is whether she will get away from it and she may very well do so!

Thanks for that example teacherwith2kids. That is the sort of thing I have seen before, and that applies around where I live, so nothing about your intention at the time of moving, or where you think of as your permanent home: it is down to actually living at the new address at certain times, and getting your paperwork in order. And if you moved for a couple of years you might well be fine. I take your point about moves to create uncertainty but I do think those will be hard to make fair in the long run, as people may well be able to come up with plausible - or indeed truthful - reasons for frequent moves, and some will be better at that than others!

On siblings, I agree with many here but also think that it is reasonable that families should be able to move to bigger houses as they grow (which often means moving off the doorstep of popular schools); and I think it is good for communities and for schools for families to have some certainty about schools so they can put down roots: would it work to define an area around the school that is a bit larger than that from which people usually get in, and that includes a good mix of housing, and say people can move within that and retain the sibling advantage, but if they move outside it, they take their chances with everyone else?

Twoterrors,

Your point on siblings - the 'priority admissions area' [= catchment, but worded to make it clear that people living in it are not guaranteed a place] around the school is, in fact, larger than the usual admissions distance [though this year, being a low number year locally, the two were more or less identical].

So yes, 'siblings in this priority admissions area' are very likely to be admitted from a slightly larger area than 'other children in this priority admissions area' in most years. It is quite possible, as long as the rules remain the same - and that is what I mean by creating uncertainty, there is no indication that the rules WILL remain the same - to move out to the edges of the priority catchment area and still get siblings in under this rule.

It is a secondary school, though - and I take the point above that the arguments for a sibling rule at primary are MUCH stronger than for secondary.

Tiggy - cross posted.

One thing I did not make clear in my first post was that the secondary school reuqests ALL addresses of that pupil during primary school, not just at the point of leaving. In the case of 'suspicious' moves - ie a family which has lived in a large family house for 6 years suddenly moves into a small flat next to the deisrable school just in time for applications to go in - then they investigate whether the family still owns the previous house, and that is one of the common reasons for a child whose place was obtained fraudulently being turned down or removed from the school.

Teacher, thanks for explaining.

I still don't think it is that black and white. What is one person's good reason may be another's idiocy, so I do think it could come back to a thought crime. I wonder whether deliberately creating uncertainty over the rules and then removing places because in the council's view the family's explanation fr their moves was not adequate, has been tested legally?

Er I would actually say that people in social housing have more options to move than those of us who have our own houses but don't have the spare cash to move on a whim.

A lot of the children at DCs' school who live in social housing always seem to be house/flat swapping.... but strangely they don't seem to do it with an eye on the good schools - it seems to be about living closer to their families/in a larger house etc....

Maybe where you live gazza

You can (and likely will) wait years to exchange, unless you live in a particularly desirable place, in many, many areas.

This is in London - it seems to happen frequently and I'm not exaggerating. I can recall thinking that theoretically it would mean that people in social housing could move to the areas with better schools if they so wished but as I said I've not noticed that they use it for such underhand school gazumping practices - that is obviously a middle-class fraud!

Granted I don't know how long it takes although with families from school the moves have happened within one-two year time-frames I would say - judging by conversations and when the moves happened.

Twoterrors,

As tiggy says, there are quite a lot of situations in which things are forbidden by law because of the likelihood that the intention of the action is unlawful or likely to lead to harm even if the unlawful act or harm has not yet occurred.

In those cases, as in the case of fraudulent moves for school entry, the onus is on the person who has carried out the act to prove why the act is innocent.

Note, having a succession of rented addresses of which the last is in catchent is not going to pose any kind of problem. Nor is selling one house and buying another in catchment. Nor is owning a 'buy to let' property in one area while actually living in catchment. All of those are, upon investigation, absolutely fine though they may initially be flagged up on the 'this looks odd' list. The specific scenario where intention of fraud is assumed until proved otherwise is the rental of a property in catchment while retaining a family house elsewhere, especially where no other reasons such as change of place of employment or change of family circumstances exist.

Really? You can be arrested and presumably charged for walking along the road with a baseball bat? I had no idea. What is the crime?

Yes, I can see with a lot of the examples you give that it would be clear cut but what I am trying to say, clearly not successfully, is that there could be a grey area. Lived outside catchment in family home for 3 years, move into catchment for 2, move out again, for example.

I dont want to hold up an interesting discussion though, so without any actual examples of admission policies that specify these criteria (ie well beyond proof of address at various points), let's leave it.

Absolutely appreciate that there could be a grey area. The aim is to make that grey area as small as possible.

For example, for the school I have experience of, your example of a move into catchment for 2 years would ONLY work if the family home was sold or if it was clear that there was no intention to move back (e.g. permanent conversion into flats for letting as an investment, or if the family home was at such a distance that the commute was unfeasible, as would happen if a family moved into the area from another part of the country and rented in catchment because they needed somewhere to live in that town but had not yet had time to sell the old house) - as otherwise the trail that showed a continuous mortgage or other paperwork at the out of catchment house would be sufficient to trigger an investigation and possible removal of the child from the school.

But surely the admissions order is siblings IN CATCHMENT, then those in catchment, then siblings out of catchment? So it would be pointless moving out of your rental after having got child no. 1 in, because your younger children would not leap-frog over anyone who lives in catchment. They would get priority over other out-of-catchment chancers, but would not trump anyone living near the school but who had no older sibling.