How far would you go to get one?
Fake marriage breakdowns are the latest ruse to ensure a child gets in to the best school, says Anna Maxted
Years ago, we moved house to secure our son a place at a good local primary. The council requested proof of residence, so we cheerfully sent over our exchange documents. But we had misunderstood. They required completion details.
Having paid our seller extra to hurry up – the school’s application deadline had passed and offers were about to be posted – we triumphantly faxed the council admissions service our precious proof.
The reply – and I will never forget the clang of doom in my heart – was: “I’m sorry. It may be too late.” Only my husband appearing at their office, the picture of wild desperation, to beg in person, averted disaster.
Looking back, this episode, although undignified, feels tame. (And, fortunately, legal.) For, in a frantic quest to get their darlings into the best state school possible, parents are resorting to increasingly outlandish tactics.
As local authorities clamp down on those sneakily renting within desirable schools’ catchment areas – the London borough of Havering, for instance, introduced a 10-page protocol for investigating suspected “addresses of convenience” in 2015 – parental skulduggery has reached staggering heights. To quote one mother, who rented for six months streets away from a top primary, while her husband manned the family home (a 10-minute drive away): “You can get carried away.”
Little wonder that Elizabeth Coatman, The Good Schools Guide’s state school specialist, said this week: “Parents have become more creative – maybe in response to local authorities being very tight now about addresses.”
Fraudulent practices, she added, include “faking a marriage breakdown to create a situation where a child can live part time with each parent; also bogus baptism certificates and hiring private doctors to justify preferential treatment for a child’s needs”.
Indeed, annual reports compiled by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator reveal that in 2015-16 in England 267 school offers were withdrawn as the applications had been fraudulent. Last year’s figures are yet to be published, but one imagines they might be even higher.
So what might be the repercussions of, say, pretending to have split from your spouse in order to lock down a school place? If a child is already on the school roll, their place may still be rescinded if an alternative place at a school nearer “to the suspected home address” can be offered – though Havering, for instance, notes that if the child is in Year 6, 10 or 11, or has attended the school for more than a term, then they will keep their spot. (“We put the child first,” says a spokesman.) But local authorities have become far more proactive. Thanks to its stringent process, Havering only had one fraudulent application during the 2018-19 admissions round. On its website, my own London council encourages residents to anonymously turn in those suspected of using a false address by calling their fraud hotline.
If suspicions are aroused, “rigorous checks” will be made. Not merely random home visits at 7.30am, but scoping out “known short-term rental addresses near popular schools”.
They add: “We will also ask the new school to check the child’s home address at the time of admission. If it is different from the address on the application form, we will check whether the previous address was temporary.”
Several years ago, gossip circulated about local parents who had packed off their four-year-old for six months to live with his aunt – who resided on millionaire’s row, yards from an “outstanding” primary.
Everyone without a well-located relative grumbled, but stopped short of grassing them up. Nowadays, even with loyal peers, they are more likely to be caught – our council investigates “applications where the applicant doesn’t appear to be the child’s primary carer”.
Rachel, 35, a banker from Essex, took the extravagant step of purchasing a two-bedroom flat closer to a desirable primary. Her entire family squeezed into it. “It was a small community, everyone knows everyone. We thought if we didn’t actually move in, we’d get found out. We had to keep going back to the house to feed our cat,” she says.
Despite their diligence, they were discovered. “People get really annoyed,” she says. “Somebody rang the school and said: ‘They don’t really live there’. The head called me in and made me bring the deeds to show it was all above board. She said: ‘If you live there four nights a week, that’s legally your main residence’.”
Rachel was lucky. However, when it comes to renting, my local authority states that if a family rents while retaining ownership of an alternative property, that “property would normally be considered as the appropriate address to assess admission from”. The fact that a catchment area for a top school may be, as one disgruntled Mumsnet user put it, “roughly the length of Roman Abramovich’s yacht” is no excuse.
Parents, you have been warned.