should I grass up the new neighbours?

[sybilwibble]

Met the new neighbours at another neighbours drinks party. Lovely mum and daughter, plus granny. Ask Mum, as you do, Where have you moved here from? Her response was that she only lives about a mile away, where they have a lovely family home, now sat empty, but they've rented the house in our road as it's right in catchment for the great local secondary. They've been here a month, and will find out on March 1st whether their dd will get a place (she will) then they will move back in a year.

Granny then tells me seperately, that they will be moving back in March, as soon as they get the letter from the great senior school, as they have not been successful in finding anyone to rent their family home from them. Either way, I'm a bit . My dcs are younger so we're not applying this yr, so doesn't directly affect us...but would feel very sneaky calling the local authority... wwyd?

losing, you generally have to have a child baptised as a baby, and provide evidence from your priest that you actually attend church.

Finding God a fortnight before admissions opens won't cut it for most oversubscribed church schools. I can't comment on other faith schools.

If you are not allowed to rent in an admission area to get into a school then all you will do is create enclaves where only the rich can afford to buy houses there and they will keep the less affluent out. If a school wants to stop non residents getting places they can easily do that. What is wrong is putting neighbor against neighbor. Parents should be putting their efforts into making all schools as good, not squabbling over the elite few that are and creating a big brother state.

And to the point made above a number of times that "it is not criminal".

It is. It is fraud. It is just that you do not get prosecuted for it any more since there is another effective "remedy": removal of the place.

It's not criminal to move to a better school catchment. Moving back is wrong, but so far I really am struggling to see what their crime is at this current point in time.

I do wonder how they ascertain whether cases are genuine though. A friend of mine has just moved into a rented house at the very centre of a popular catchment, having realised too late that their 'bought' house had a rubbish school. There is no fraud involved - they have no intention of moving back to their old house, but equally their house is not on the market yet because it needs work doing on it before they sell. When it is sold, they will buy a house in catchment, though probably not as close as they are now, as they are indeed in a rental right next to the school that is often used for 'catchment fraud' if you want to call it that. My friends are morally and legally in the right - but how on earth do the council know that they are? And where is the line drawn? If I rent a house in catchment for 2 years and rent out my 'permanent' house for the duration, then move back, is that illegal? Genuinely interested in the answers here - seems like too many grey areas to make all councils able to pursue any but the most blatant abuses of the system.

But they are not doing anything wrong.If they find a tenant for their house before March, that will be at least 6 months.If they have gone to the trouble of renting in catchment then they will be sure to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts
LEAs can put any old bollox on their website, but at the end of the day it has to stand up in court and it is very difficult to prove that someone has acted fraudulently.For example how on earth would you prove there were no marital difficulties when a mother moved out?

I was in the mind your own business camp but SoupDragon's point is spot on and swayed me: "This is not a victimless crime". Quite. Although not criminal in the legal sense it is depriving another child of a place.

I have also just realised that based on where I live if a parent were to do this it is likely that my child would miss out. I'm not asking for much - I just want my dc to go to their nearest school.

I'd report. It is immoral and when it is discovered (and it will be with stupid parent and grandmother blabbing) it will cause upset for the child. Turning a blind eye is giving tacit consent.

And yes, the whole "system" is corrupt and wrong but a line must be drawn somewhere.

I'm mainly of the opinion that the system is at fault far mor than parents who are just trying to do their best by their child.

But the argument that there is a victim in this who is a child, does make me think twice.

The think is that if you say there is a victim, then you are basically saying that the victim deserved the place more than culprit. And I just don't think hats right, they both deserve the place equally if that is the school that's best for them. One of them is going to miss out, and considering they are children who have no responsibility for the choices their parents make, I'm not sure that either of them can be considered a victim.

I take the point that rules are there and if they are broken then that's wrong, but I don't think it holds much weight when the rules are unfair in the first place. And they are unfair, because any system that denies a child the school that is right for them on the basis that their parents chose to live in the wrong street is basically unfair. Especially when parents have to take measures like this to get into the school that is closest or one of the closest to where they live.

I'd be more sympathetic to the 'losers' if the whole system wasn't distorted by wealth in the first place. If those parents committing fraud could afford to live in catchment, they probably would. So saying 'I live I catchment and therefore my child has more right to attend the outstanding school than yours' usually amounts to saying 'my child has more right than yours because I could afford to buy in catchment and you couldn't'. The morality of the system is far from clear cut even if the laws are clear.

I'd be more sympathetic to the 'losers' if the whole system wasn't distorted by wealth in the first place. If those parents committing fraud could afford to live in catchment, they probably would. So saying 'I live I catchment and therefore my child has more right to attend the outstanding school than yours' often amounts to saying 'my child has more right than yours because I could afford to buy in catchment and you couldn't'. The morality of the system is far from clear cut even if the laws are clear.

I do see what you are saying, I really do. But if we leave the legalities out of it and concentrate on the morality of it, the 'cheaters' aren't taking a place away from someone else. The place has not yet been awarded, it does not rightfully belong to anyone to be able to take it away from them.

Parents of one child using financial clout to deprive another child of a place is as unfair as it gets. The system may have its faults but at least buying your way in is definitely not allowed

I disagree with this because people are using financial clout whether they legitimately buy a house in the right area or they rent for a year. I don't think we can say that one way is fair an one way isn't when they basically boil down to the same thing - parents using their finances to give their children the best possible chance. Buying your way in is allowed, but only if you do it in the way the law tells you you can, and that seems unfair to me.

I know all of this is worthless because the law is the law and we can't pick and choose which laws we want to follow, but I just can't agree that there is a victim when either way, one deserving child is going to miss out to another equally deserving child.

the neighbours have moved from an area with another good school, so have freed up a place there for someone who might have been unwillingly travelling to the school they are now applying for??

Thing is, the Granny might be of the opinion they will move out in March because they haven't found anyone to rent out their house, that doesn't mean for one minute the mother isn't savvy enough to realise this is a year long commitment if she doesn't want the school place removed. If you do report this, then come March they stay put and are still in that rented house in September, they won't lose their place. Even more so if they then are able to find someone to rent out their house in the mean time.

Grandparents often have strong opinions on what their DCs/DIL's will do, doesn't often bare any relation to what happens.

Oh, and private secondary schools round here are £30k a year. Even if the rent is costing them £2k a month, they are still going to spend less over a year than they would on just one year of private. If you think that private school is a £210k commitment, whereas moving into a catchment area would probably be a less than £25k commitment, it's easy to see that it doesn't follow that people can afford the good private education just because they can afford to run two houses for 1 year. (and if they are leaving the main home empty, they will not have anything like double running costs.)

GPs do get it very wrong, we took my mother to our local church and she loudly asked someone how often we had to come to get DS into the connected school and has talked about this to other people too (how we have to go if we want DS to go to the school)

now we've been going to that church since before we even considered having children, have always been involved in it, and would continue to do so even if he didn't go to the connected school. Its our church.

She is technically right, DS does have to go to the church to get into the school, but the way she says it implies that we go to the church just to get him in the school when actually we go to the church anyway, so he IS in the criteria to get into the school anyway IYKWIM and we're not doing anything extra for the sake of the school!

Her facts are right but the way she says it makes us sound like system players

she'll use phrases like "and they have to be christened.." even though she knows full well that at the time when we got DS christened as a new baby we didn't think DHs job would even allow is to stay in the area for as long as it has, so we had no clue what schools we'd be aiming for at that point! We just wanted him christened at the church we attended!

She doesn't get it when we point out how they way she talks about it is making us look!

oh yes, we've had that about the school and church - my mum is most horrified that we aren't going to put DS in the school attached to our church, she's convinced that's why we've been going to that one, it's making her look wrong that we're going to aim for a closer one...

yup when it came to it it was a very difficult toss up between the state and church school to decide which was actually best for DS, and we're still not 100% sure even now, so we weren't desperate for the church school because the state one is great, we just like the church! both are good, but my mum makes it sound like we've been going to church (since before he was even an idea ) in desperation to get him into the church school

I disagree tiggy, because you are assuming that house prices diminish as you get to the edge of the catchment. That may be the case in some areas, but by no means all.

Where I live, you are essentially pretty likely to get a place in your catchment school. So there is no 'differentiation' between different bits of the catchment - there are just expensive catchments and cheap catchments. For us, for eg, a similar house to ours three streets away in a different catchment would go for 200k more, at least, even though both houses are on the edge of their respective catchments. So actually, you ARE looking at a straight equivalence between wealth and school catchment. In that situation, renting out a house for a year in a catchment you could not in a million years afford to buy in does not seem particularly morally dubious to me.

And I also disagree that it is necessarily something reserved for the super-rich. Not open to those struggling financially, certainly, but if you rent your own house out for the duration, it is not equivalent to paying 2x rent/mortgage.

Oh just to add two points.

I know one family who did rent to make sure their eldest got into "highly desirable school" the irony is she would have got in anyway from their family home.

In my area house prices can actually go up as you get to the edge of "highly desirable school catchment" and even more just outside. But people who live in those roads do usually send their children to private schools, and the houses tend to be bigger, have more land or better views (or just more expensive neighbours).

If you are living in catchment at the time you apply then you are not cheating, whether it be rental of a second home or having lived there for donkeys years.
I know loads of people who have done it, not because they can't afford to live in the catchment area (in fact often quite the opposite - the catchment area is more downmarket)They just don't want to live there.As long as you follow the letter of the law (if not the spirit) then that's fine IMO

Yes I'm still actually to see anything that suggests that renting a property in catchment for a good length of time and actually living there is 'fraud' in admissions terms. Clearly, giving a grandparents address/renting a studio flat and pretending to live there - not on. But actually moving house for an entire year or more? Is that really fraud?! Someone seemed to suggest above that if you own a house somewhere that is your 'permanent' home in a council's eyes even if you rent it out to someone else and live somewhere different for an extended length of time. I find it hard to believe that that would stand up in court.