Parents who cheat to get school places will be prosecuted
Polly Curtis
The Guardian, Saturday 31 October 2009
Parents who cheat to get a place at the best state schools will face fines and court orders under hardline proposals to be set out by a major inquiry on Monday.
At the moment, parents who lie only risk forfeiting the school place. The inquiry, by the chief schools adjudicator, will say the penalty should be toughened up, a source with links to the review said. Sanctions could include a court summons, a fine or an order to undertake unpaid work. It follows an unsuccessful attempt by Harrow council this summer to prosecute a parent under the Fraud Act who was accused of lying about her address to get her child a place at a popular primary. The case collapsed, exposing the lack of legal sanctions deterring parents from making deceptive statements in their applications, and prompted the schools secretary, Ed Balls, to request the inquiry. Ian Craig, the chief schools adjudicator, refused to divulge details of his report, which is currently with ministers, but said: “There is very little to discourage parents from making deceptive applications. If they had no chance to get that place in the first place, that is not a deterrent.” His inquiry will also reveal the extent of fraudulent applications in England. “We know that the issues are broader than just one London borough,” he said.
The Local Government Association found that three-quarters of councils had witnessed rapid rises in fraudulent applications in the last three years. Some were found to have temporarily rented flats, used a friend’s address or moved in with a relative in the catchment area.Harrow council attempted to prosecute Mrinal Patel under the Fraud Act after she used her mother’s address to apply to a heavily oversubscribed primary school for her son. Harrow was forced to drop the case because it could not prove that she stood to gain financially from the alleged deception, which would be required for a prosecution under the anti-fraud laws.
David Ashton, leader of Harrow council, said: “I’m hoping the review will come up with a degree of sanction. It doesn’t need to be as stringent as the Fraud Act but it needs to have teeth.”
Margaret Morrissey, of the campaigning group Parents Outloud, said: “Lying is wrong, but I do understand why parents do it. The government has promised to improve schools to take away this problem, and it has not delivered.” We need a realistic criteria acknowleding where parents work and where the people who care for children live. Life is difficult enough we do not need Ed Balls to continually make life more difficult we need help and a degree of working with parents not against all the time school places need to be available where we need them not where government say they should be
Government statistics published this week revealed a sharp rise in the number of parents appealing to get their child into the primary school of their choice.
Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, said: “The government is dealing with the symptoms rather than the causes of mass parental dissatisfaction. At the moment there are hundreds of thousands of parents not getting their choice of school. We need to allow new providers into the system so more parents have the kinds of schools they want.”
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My daughter, Amelia, got a place at her secondary school in Maidstone, Kent, because the family lives just a fifth of a mile inside the catchment area. It’s a fine line that changes every year depending on how many siblings get places first, I am a communications manager. Cheating parents cannot be condoned, but I understand how they can be forced to go to such lengths as renting houses or “finding God” to get their child a place. “All parents ever want is the right school for their child. Year on year, parents are being put in this position. I can’t endorse people doing the wrong thing but I can absolutely understand what drives them to do that. I question whether the Government should be looking at making schools more equal in the first instance, rather than prosecuting parents who use underhand tactics to secure their child a place. When you are looking for where to send your child you haven’t got time to wait until they build a new good school. There’s no use knowing that in three years time there will be something better on offer. Amelia, 12, attends Maplesden Noakes School, a comprehensive in Maidstone where the grammar school system is still in place. The problem is really focused in Kent — for grammar schools it doesn’t matter how far away you live. But the other 90 per cent of children can only go to their nearest school. (published in the Times 3/11/09)
I’m disappointed by Parents Outloud’s response to this. Let’s not forget that the parents who are making deceptive applications are the ones who have money, connections and resources – this is not a case of ‘all sorts’ of parents voicing their dissatisfactions, it is a privileged minority of parents abusing their privileges in order to secure a place at a local child’s expense.
A friend of mine is applying for her daughter’s school place. She lives on the same road as the school, literally a three-minute walk if that. She knows parents who are renting a flat for the few months of their application process – their flat is nearer than her house and it seems likely that they will, in effect, take her daughter’s place, though they actually live much further away.
Local children should go to their local primary school. The rhetoric of ‘choice’ is a damaging thing to promote; in effect it creates a competition which, again, middle-class parents are likely to win. Parent Outloud needs to reconsider who it is speaking out loud for.
Tracy no one is arguing with you and of course it is not right for the practice your friend is experiencing to happen, it is absolutely wrong. The rhetoric of choice is a myth and always has been, choice is Governments words . There has to be a place for local children at local schools and hopefully the government will stop parents renting property etc to secure places they have at present no right to. Today many children are cared for by grandparents and others and to go to a school local to their home is difficult so what we need are extra places a second form entry, school places should and must not be a competition nor should it cause the terrible stress it does especially when lottery places joins the debate.
Exactly Laura. So why won’t Parents Outloud say what needs to be said and offer up some healthy public criticism of the parents who are lying about where they live in order to secure places at schools that are not local to them?
You say ‘I understand how they can be forced to go to such lengths’. No one forces them to go to any lengths – lets be clear. These are deliberate attempts to fraudulently secure a place they have no right to, at the expense of a local child. Rather than sitting by and being understanding and ‘hoping’ that the Government will stop this, why not come out and condemn it?
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