School application from rented address - nothing council can do?

[StandoutMop]

A passing acquaintance (our dc were at nursery together but now at separate primaries) has moved into a rented house in order to get her eldest a place at their preferred secondary.

Their own home (which they own) is being rented out but they plan to return once dc is in the school, then repeat the rental trick for dc2 (as non-catchment siblings don't get any priority).

I know this is the case as she told me quite happily when I commented about how frequently I was passing her in street and asked if she had moved.

My dc aren't same school years as her's so won't affect me, but seems unfair on those living in catchment to me. (Slightly ashamed to admit this but) I called the council to ask if this was allowed and they told me that it is against the spririt of the rules, but there is nothing they can do if that is what people choose to do, as long as they don't move back before the dc start school.

Really? Do they have no powers to stop people playing the system like this? Seems crazy to me, and opens the system up massively to abuse by those who can afford to rent / move temporarily while local families lose out.

Yes absolutely it isnt actually 'fraudulent' or 'unfair' only in your eyes it is and hers

It is fraudulent, albeit not criminal fraud. The rules are clear. Parents must apply from the permanent address where the child lives. Doing otherwise is clearly against the rules.

And yes, it is unfair. By acting in this way the parents have deprived another child of a place that is rightfully theirs.

As has been pointed out up thread, if they are found out any place they have obtained by giving a false address can be taken away from them even after the child has started school. If that happens their child will be given a place at the nearest school with places available. That is unlikely to be a popular school. Every year thousands of parents find that their child ends up with a worse school than they would have got if they hadn't tried to cheat the system.

Thankgoditsover - yes, the same school. We would have got in on distance last year, for the first time in living memory. But we went for an alternative option (as did many others living even closer to the legendary one) and have no regrets.

If a 'rule' is unfair and discriminatory it is perfectly right and morale to break that rule. Yes there might be consequences but that is how we make a fairer society, brave people standing up for their human rights against oppression, even if it makes the establishment uncomfortable. Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Liu Xiaobo, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Susan Brownell Anthony, Roxana Saberi... to name but a few.

So perhaps one of the sanctimonious posters can explain why it is fair for millionaires to be allowed to cheat buy their way into a good school but the less worthy wealthy who can only perhaps afford to rent in the area for six months should do what they are told and send their children to a bog standard comp.

Families should do the best they can for their family and if it means standing up to the wealthy 'elite' then we have a duty to do so.

sanctimonious posters

As Tiggytape says it is not sanctimonious to expect the rules to apply to everyone. If you don't like the rules campaign against them as the people you list did. Just breaking them puts you in the wrong.

I think you will find that the "wealthy elite" generally send their children to independent schools.

You may like to think of cheating as "standing up to the wealthy elite". In my experience it generally means depriving someone who is no more (and possibly significantly less) wealthy than you. And, as enforcement by councils improves, it increasingly frequently means that you are condemning your child to an unpopular school instead of the middling school they would have got if you had been honest.

It is fraudulent, albeit not criminal fraud. The rules are clear. Parents must apply from the permanent address where the child lives.

But how are they being fraudulent prh, the family has moved fair and square into the rented house? People 'let out their house and rent another all the time for a myriad of reasons.
I don't even think it is unethical-if they were not living in the rented house then another family would be.

If they are renting temporarily in order to get a place at their preferred school they are breaking the rules. Most councils where this is a problem have rules in place that if parents own a house and rent another they will use the address of the house they own and ignore the rented property. So, even if the parents intend to live in the rented property permanently, they still have to use the address of the house they own.

It's up to the local council. Round here that's perfectly allowable and infact encouraged by the headmaster at the local grammar. Cost my dd a place at the grammar as we wouldn't do it.

Here it's allowed as long as people actually move into the rented house. But they never do, but even then the school don't investigate it. Maybe they would if you gave them specific names but I didn't know the names of anyone who'd done it in dds year. It tends to be families from a town a bit further away than our village. But the school must be suspicious that they attend a primary school in x village 15 miles away but the address is in town. But they do Fuck all.

And when I said to the head at an open evening that I was concerened dd wouldn't get a place his words irrc "you could always rent a house nearby, we just need to see a council tax bill".

Bolognese is right.

Very rich or very poor seem to benefit from this. Around the school I think mentioned are houses for 1.3 million plus. There is no family housing available for people wanting to buy for under £900,000k that does not require over £100,000k of work. At the bottom there is council property with families who can acesss the school. Where the issue lies is with families with lower middle class incomes who cannot afford to buy and who are not eligible for social housing. So their only alternaive is to rent out their property and rent near the school to get in. Its their only form of social mobility and to give their children the best education they can. I know people who have done this and some who work in education too who have done this. It is not illegal at all and it happens all the time because people are desperate to give their kids a good education and cannot afford to send them privately (and wouldnt if they could afford to) or buy in the area. Why should it be for the wealthy or very poor?

If they are renting temporarily in order to get a place at their preferred school they are breaking the rules

That might be the sentiment but the devil is in the detail.How on earth do you prove what the parents' intentions are? And unless it's a holiday let, how do you determine what temporary is? I let houses out and the agency has always put the tenants on a 6 month STLA whatever the tenants intentions.

We let out our home and moved into rented accommodation to get eldest child into grammar school .But we did it with the intention of ultimately buying in catchment which we did.

That might be the sentiment but the devil is in the detail.How on earth do you prove what the parents' intentions are? And unless it's a holiday let, how do you determine what temporary is? I let houses out and the agency has always put the tenants on a 6 month STLA whatever the tenants intentions.

Councils that are serious about clamping down on admissions fraud have dealt with this by requiring people in rented accommodation to show that they have severed all links with their previous addresses. So owning a house outside the catchment while renting a house closer to the school would fall foul of this requirement, quite rightly.

Just want to say that I can see the point about the unfairness of price driven catchment areas*, but the Nelson Mandela comparison is a bit much.

• disclaimer: although in our personal experience, such rent-and-move-back tactics are most popular with people who were fairly well off in the first with place, so not sure how strongly the point holds really

I love the way some pp have tried to make this a sjw thing and imply that not denouncing people who play the system in this way is being on the side of the poor Trust me, poor families aren't the ones doing this. Poor families can't stump up the associated costs of a move (fees, deposits, etc). They can't pay the inflated rental prices associated with the areas that secure 'good' school places.

For those deliberately misunderstanding, the OP is talking about a situation where a family has not moved 'fair and square' to a new permanent address, but let out their permanent home and rented a temporary home in order to secure a school place their child would not otherwise be entitled to. They are doing it solely to get the school place. They intend to return to their permanent home once the child has a place and to repeat the trick again when they need to secure their other child's place.

My children have to go to a primary school that is around 3 miles from home and it generally takes us 45 minutes on a crowded bus to get there. I have just checked on our council's website and there are thirty two primary schools closer to our house. There are eleven within a mile of our house. If I found out that the reason we couldn't get into a local school was that someone had decided that it was perfectly OK to do the above and scam a place for their child I would be fucking incandescent and damn right I would shop them.

Yes Alltouchedout, I have visions of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Gandhi all sharing a rented flat next door to Coleridge School/Eleanor Palmer/Camden Girls as a way of socking it to the man.

Of course the admissions system is a mess and frankly faith admissions are the biggest problem. However, I don't see how anyone can think it's someone crusading and moral to rent a flat next door to a school for 6 months before moving back into your old place. The people (in my experience) who seem to lose the places where this happens a lot are usually the ones in social housing. It also increases the clusters of involved parents in certain schools and increases the clusters of less involved families in others which goes a fair way to explaining why some schools have the better results that attract this behaviour in the first place.

the point is though that they have actually moved in.that is there abode they are not pretending to live there.

They do give you the chance to explain but if you have no compelling reason, they won't let you use the rented address.

But everyone is going to make up a compelling reason though aren't they - 'To be nearer to Auntie Jean who is not so well' Who decides what a compelling reason is? Because if the LEA make the wrong decision then they will have to find another place.Also the idea that the council has time to scour the land registry for mentions of parentsof tens of thousands of applicants is ludicrous! besides the house could be in the name of one parent and the application made in the name of the other, or a parent could slightly change their name on the admissions form.
And what about renters moving short term to get into catchment- how are you going to catch them?

There is a difference between renting a small flat and 'pretending' the family live there and moving house in order to be in catchment (renting it or otherwise). I see why you are annoyed but in reality it would be so hard to police and stopping house moving would often catch lots of innocent people too, like those who own a flat but rent it out so they can live in a house, or who move for work or who can't afford their mortgage so are renting it out and renting somewhere cheaper...its endless. Mostly though, people do try and go by the spirit of the rules.

We own a small flat with no garden and a family house is upwards of 1.4 million near any decent school. We're currently out of catchment as every school near us has a catchment of 0.1 miles and we're 0.2 from nearest school. We're going to rent out our flat and use the income to pay a substantial amount of rent within a catchment long-term. The reason we can't buy is because bankers etc have bought up all the property. Why should they get the decent schools because they can afford a 1.4 million pound house when my family has lived in this area for generations? We don't want to get off the property ladder completely. I'd be highly surprised if any council banned school applications from renters who own nearby but instead use the records to make sure the address is not short-term. Frankly I hope they wouldn't waste public money like that.

Why do you have so much time on your hands? You need to take up a hobby.

How are faith admissions the biggest problem? Yes I know that a lot of you don't agree with schools that admit children of a particular faith first before non faith children, but it's been likes this for years and it isn't going to change.

Enjoying the turn this has taken in my absence. I'm a Nazi with no life and my acquaintance is a freedom fighter

Anyhow, for those concerned about it (as stated in OP) I was surprised this was allowed (but assumed was as she was so freely admitting it) and rang council to clarify. They told me was within letter if not spirit of the rules. I did not give name or (either) address of mother or child so fear not for their welfare.

I'd have been back to tell you this sooner but was too busy watching Mrs Smith at no. 52 from behind my net curtains.

So its ok for a millionaire to buy a house and live in it with the sole intention of getting DC into a school, then six months later selling it and moving away.

But its not ok for a middle class family to rent a flat and live in it with the sole intention of getting DC into a school, then six months later moving away.

What a bunch of hypocrites.