Rented flat to get a place in a 2ndary in good catchment - would you tell on them?

[SecondhandRose]

A friend of mine is really cross as a friend of hers rented a flat in a good area to use it as an address to get her child into an excellent local 2ndary school. They paid £900 a month plus bills for the flat but didn't live there.

Her child has now got a place in this school and mine friend is even more cross. To top it all her husband has a cash job, claims he earns £12K a year and then claims benefits when in reality he earns much more and is not entitled to the benefits.

So the moral dilemma is shall I tell the school for my friend who doesn't feel she can tell the school but is so cross with her friend she feels someone should.

I wouldn't bother contacting the school as they would do nothing anyway, but I would report them to the benefit fraud line as I find that much more offensive and annoying than the whole school situation.

Sorry if this thread has moved on I haven't read it all.

I wouldn't report the school thing and I'm not even sure it's wrong. They forked out a lot of money to own a property in the "right" area, they showed proof of residence (even if they didn't live there, they could have). In my area that, and proof of child's birth date, is all that schools ask for.

I know this thread is a bit cold but I feel quite strongly about this! The original friend (not you as you only have the facts second hand) SHOULD report this situation to the school. It's called fraud, pure and simple. I too am rather shocked at the number of posters here who actually think it's OK- maybe some guilt coming in??! As someone said, if those parents did the right thing and put as much effort into demanding the raising of standards in their catchmented school, everyone would benefit- it's called 'society' and just because we may have personal grievances with individual schools/ education depts doesn't mean we should condone this sort of rule breaking behaviour. With this attitude, sooner or later you or yours will be at the losing end of someone else's 'cheating' and suddenly it won't all seem so 'acceptable'.

The benefits thing is a separate issue - that is bad, and I hope they get found out.

The renting a flat thing - it's not great, but then again, as I said on a similar thread, it's appalling that a system exists in which "choice" can be used in this way. I'd be inclined to blame the system rather than individuals who abuse it.

If the comprehensive system actually worked, all schools would be the same quality and people wouldn't need to do this.

You're right on that score- the system is readily open to abuse by those who choose to do so. I can't say I know 'the answer' though I did like the idea of every comprehensive having to take 'x'% of very bright kids, 'x'% of middling kids, 'x'% of below average kids to make a genuinely mixed community which would be likely to reflect the demographic of the local area IF the populace hasn't been skewed by large numbers of better off parents who have deliberately moved into catchment to nab those places.

That would be social engineering, though, miljee - wouldn't it? They wouldn't be comprehensives any more.

The true comprehensives are those in small-ish towns where the school is a hub of the catchment, and draws from all the areas around it - leafy suburbs, flats, council estates, rural bits and all. And even then, some people will opt out into the private system.

The very worst, and least "comprehensive", are the schools in big cities where the catchments are spokes radiating out, like slices of a cake, and each "slice" will contain one or two suburbs of a particular character. Makes them a self-fulfilling prophecy. I could draw up NEXT year's league tables in our LEA with one hand tied behind my back, and I bet I could get the positions roughly right and most of the percentages to within 2% either way.

And I can't talk, because we moved (properly) to be in a better catchment.

Lots of people pretend to be good Christians in order to get kids into good schools. I moved house (although did actually live in it) in order to get my daughter into a good school, and am now moving away again. It's a sad state of affairs and unfortunately does give your kids a bad example. I feel quite stongly about the religious thing becuase I am a good Christian, but I happen not to go to church ALL the time, therefore could not get past the "how many times do you kiss the alter steps" type questions on school applications. There are tons of parents I know who ONLY go to to church because of schools, which seems wrong. However, I have possibly cheated someone out of a school place because I could afford to up sticks and rent a place for a year.

The tax thing is fraud. Don't know if I would get involved though.

I guess we need to try and find a way that is more 'fair' than the existing system. In many ways us parents are 'forced' into taking some sort of action seeing as everyone else appears to be so you could be 'left standing' with only the local 3rd rate comp as your 'choice'. I'd agree that my percentage solution IS a form of social engineering but it's mooted as a way of overcoming the present 'financial engineering' employed by wealthier parents to ensure they get what they want! To be fair, a 'normal' unadulterated catchment would surely include the whole intellectual spread anyway so it wouldn't necessarily require 'bussing' kids in to get the 'right' IQ mix.

I still feel the blatancy of the original poster's aquaintance- (the 900 quid a month empty flat) goes beyond the pale in my book, however! I also think the idea that once a child is IN a(chosen) school his place is sacrosanct and that it would be wrong and cruel to force them to leave once their parents' duplicity has been uncovered. What about the rights of the child who failed to secure that place honestly?

the system allows this to happen so in my opinion theres not a lot anyone can do until the system changes... i feel we should go back to the old way of a school having an area and if you live in that area i.e its your closest school then you go to that school... unfortunatly that isn,t how it works which enables the school to choose its pupils instead of the other way round. the system would have parents believe they have a choice pmsl when the truth is we only have a preferance and there is a HUGE difference. i would prefer to drive a poarche and live in a 6 bedroomed house with stables but in reality i don,t have that as a choice... my daughters closest school is what people consider a GREAT school but she is not allowed to go there because they choose there pupils taking in children as far as 30 miles away while my daughter has a 5 mile bus ride to a school who no one wants. the GREAT school is only a great school because of this selection process, if we went back to the nearest school process all schools in the uk would have mixed ability thuss making them TRUE comprehensives.....is that not what comprehensive is supposed to be all about ???

i went to a so called good school and look i still can,t spell oh and my answer to the oridginal question is no i wouldn,t tell as i think we are all capable of this extreme behavior when it concerns our children.... call it a materialistic maternal instinct

I agree with you in principle, rachluv. But I think we'd still have a problem in big cities, as the catchment areas of the "good" schools would still be the leafy suburbs where the most middle-class people lived, and where the house-prices would be at a premium. Meanwhile the failing schools on sink-estates would continue to be failing schools on sink-estates. It would be like it is now, only worse.

can it really get any worse ? and lets face it the kids on the estates never get into the so called good schools anyway because of the selection process and the middle class kids in the leafy suberbs as you call them already go to the so called good schools, so while ever we sit back with our british stiff uper lips and do nothing things will never change

No I wouldn't tell on them! You do what you have to when it comes to your children's education! It's look out for number 1 I'm afraid.

But babe1, what if your child were applying to the same school and someone renting a flat closer to the school might nick your child's place? Surely then self-interest would dictate that you should tell the authorities?

i oculd understand if your freind wanted to snitch on them to the benfits people but not to the school.

if they feel so stringly about getting their child into a good school they are willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money to get them there then thats their business.

But what about the child who would have got the place otherwise, BATtyMumma? It's not a victimless crime.

(I've actually known someone who did this and I didn't tell the authorities btw )

but i can't see what the school would be able to do about it anyway? if they are actually renting the flat, paying the rent and its all in their name then they can say that theya re living there and if worst comes to worst im sure they could move in if even for a few weeks.

there would be no point in telling anyone as there is nothing they can do about it.

Some schools do check up on whether future pupils really live at the addresses given - they send someone round to the house to see who's living there. And some pupils have had their places taken away even after they have started at the school.

It is wrong what they've done but not worth getting worked up about imo. Like others have said - what goes around comes around and they have to live with their consiences (sp?).

I'd steer clear tbh.

Very true, FioFio. I've heard (though I don't know how true it really is) that there are quite a few temporary separations in the run-up to the school admissions deadline.

Beats me why anyone thinks the postcode lottery is a fairer way of allocating school places than any other.

I wonder, are we more sympathetic to people who lie about their addresses to get school places than we are to benefit cheats because the former is a crime where we are more likely to know (and understand the motivation of)a perpetrator than a victim (the victims probably won't even know that they weren't just unlucky), whereas it's clear that the benefit cheat affects all of us by taking money that could have been spent on something else, or just not taken in taxes?