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.

You must work for a much richer council than me prh ;-)

I am not sure what you mean by lost admissions appeals. Do you mean to say a parent launches an appeal on the grounds that child x lives in a rented house ?Surely the appeals panel wouldn't have any knowledge of that and indeed want to get into discussing the admission of another child (who might even have been a priority admission)

Objectively, schools are funded from national coffers, not local taxes. London densities and travel make for 'local' being a large area, especially at secondary. Local councils operate consistent admissions procedures. Whether they are 'fair' or 'moral' is not as simple as distance from home, especially in London. They need to be consistent, and the outcomes reasonable. They appear so, in Camden.

If CSFG had a significant number of pupils whose mothers tactically gave birth to sons exactly five academic years before a stream of daughters, and they were all replaced by 'deserving admission failures', it would become just like the schools the current admission failures are 'forced' to attend. Presumably not the lovely La SWAP lot with their sweeping grounds and superior facilities. The teachers, after all, are similar and move about all these schools.

A few instrumentalists would hardly dent the level of music in other schools. Their impact is far less than say somewhere like a London super-selective denting performance elsewhere. There are very few state schools to avoid in that part of London, and most people are happy enough where they are. Even in the fee-paying sector, most parents stick with where their child is happy, some after much more bruising rejections from either better performing schools or their prep telling them their DC would be better matched elsewhere. It is questionable anyway whether the CSFG ethos would suit competitive parents who fail in their mission. State school admissions procedures apply to all applicants, successful or not. If you didn't get in, that's because someone more suitable got there before you. Try the independent sector, there may be more flex there.

Paperm0ver

The word on the street is that it isn't that good a school anyway and people I know have opted for the other localish single sex over that one.

To my point above, it will be very interested to see future results vs catchment size, because my intuition is that at the margin, tighter criteria / more controls discourage those parents most likely to be very involved in their children education from attempting to temp-rent their way in. Which in turn means an intake marginally less obssessed with raw results and lower performance and the realisation that most of the added value of the school was in allowing a partially self-selecting intake.

On a sidenote, /that/ school a perfext example of why those people are not at all sticking it to the man. Fake addresses in the streets directly next to the street very likely obtaining places to the detriment of the nearby estates.

What's up with sibling places anyway? They make sense for primary admissions given parental burden. But how does one justify priority to little brother or sister of a 6th form student who in all likelihood is a 100% independent commuter at that point

You must work for a much richer council than me

I don't work for a council but I do know the stats. It may be, of course, that you live in an area where there is no problem with renting or where the LA isn't bothering to do anything about the problem beyond a few basic checks and a handful of investigations.

Do you mean to say a parent launches an appeal on the grounds that child x lives in a rented house

The appeal would be on the grounds that the Council was provided with evidence that child x applied from a false address and failed to investigate. It won't always succeed by any means but some appeal panels have been known to allow appeals where it is clear that the Council has simply ignored evidence of cheating. The panel is unlikely to get involved in figuring out whether or not child x really did use a false address.

alej... sadly neither my nor your opinion matters that much on what constitutes 'making sense' policy-wise.

The school admissions code has not been contravened, and challenges have not been upheld. Therefore the local council has applied sound procedures legally and diligently. It has done its job of allocating school places and delivering a service paid for by central government.

Some of us are of the view there are no magic schools. The only magic is what the child can conjure when they are not blocked, and that's a function of their own learned behaviour mostly from their families.

how does one justify priority to little brother or sister of a 6th form student who in all likelihood is a 100% independent commuter at that point

Passing on uniform which over 7 years adds up to £££.

how does one justify priority to little brother or sister of a 6th form student who in all likelihood is a 100% independent commuter at that point

Passing on uniform which over 7 years adds up to £££

maryso I 'm not that bothered really and there is definitely nothing wrong with benefitted from the sibling rule as it was written. I was just pointing out that the rule itself is an interesting way to approach distribution of places when you think of it.

And I fully agree with you on family being one of the largest determinant of pupil performance. This is why all this is a self-reinforcing process in the end (schools perceived to be worth the extra effort to get into attract hands-on, pro-active parents, whose kids have more favourable outcomes, which increases the perception those schools are worth the extra effort to get into)

Re uniform.
A) school in question doesn't have a uniform
B) lots of bits of uniform can't be shared between opp sex children
C) most secondary school uniform gets knackered
D) no secondary school has uniform for 7 years, only 5

So not sure that's really a justification for sibling policy at secondary...

There are some genuine justifications I'm sure, just not sure if they outweigh the disadvantages.

I wish I had seen some of these posts when I was going through applications a couple of years back. DD was near the top on the waiting list on offers day but I know that a child below her (distance criteria) moved into rented accommodation between initial and 2nd round offers, went straight to the top of the list and was immediately offered a place. The child's family moved only a mile from their (owned) house which they rented out. They've since moved back home .
DD stayed at the top of the waiting list but didn't get an offer. She ended up at her 2nd choice school and finally got a place at the end of Yr7.

I did report what I knew to the council; the admissions staff told me that if the family had actually moved then this was legitimate and that the same option was open to me, provided that I moved even closer to the school then they did! I was pretty appalled, and very disappointed for DD but didn't have the emotional energy to appeal; I thought it better to put all my energy into being positive about our 2nd choice. I also thought that it would be impossible to collect the confidential data to prove that DD should have received a place.

I've since heard of at least 1 other family who temporarily rented next to this same school and I wish in retrospect that I had challenged the council at the time. It is basically a fraud and it is one which has a direct impact on other children.

Our secondary school is very big on the school being a community and they believe the sibling policy feeds into that - families involved long term with the school due to multiple children are more likely to get involved and support the school. My DC enjoy being at the same school - not all teens suddenly want nothing to with their siblings.