Parents call for action over ‘rent a home, get a school place’ loophole used by well-off
Published: 21 March, 2013
by DAN CARRIER
THE Town Hall has pledged to crack down on pushy parents who fiddle school admission forms by listing short-term rental properties as home addresses to get their children into the best-performing primaries.
Worried parents affected by the race for places have written to council chiefs with their suspicions about how the system can be sidestepped. The council has said it will take a tough stance over “fraudulent” applications.
With Camden schools feted by inspectors as some of the best in the country, the New Journal has been repeatedly told how some parents are renting homes near schools to get their children places when they have no intention of living there for any length of time.
The problem has got so bad that parents whose children are in the nursery at Kentish Town’s Eleanor Palmer School, one of the best in north London, have written to the Town Hall outlining what they see as loopholes which well-off families can exploit – and are demanding action.
Tim Carew lives 200 yards from Eleanor Palmer, which has an “outstanding” Ofsted report and a glowing reputation among parents.
His daughter was in the nursery and the family expected she would gain a place in the reception class. But to their dismay, she missed out by one place – and now faces a much longer journey to Carlton Primary School in Gospel Oak. He said: “My daughter was offered a nursery place. They made it clear there was no guarantee they will get a place in the reception class, but we thought we would be about 25th in line and there was a good chance we would get into the school. We were 33rd.
“There is one set of parents who have rented a house in Raveley Street [where the school is situated] when their permanent address is much, much further away, out of the catchment area. It meant they got their daughter in and pushed mine out.”
He added: “People are dropping out of the private school system. Their reasoning is it could cost around £20,000 to rent a home near a good school for a year, or £120,000 to pay fees for primary schools for a few years, so it’s a money saver.
“It is immoral. It is at the expense of someone else’s child. What message are you sending to your own child by behaving like this?”
The New Journal contacted three heads at some of Camden’s best-performing schools which parents say are targeted by cheats but none would go on the record about the issue.
The letter signed by 19 Eleanor Palmer School nursery parents to the Town Hall said: “Schools deemed outstanding by Ofsted inspections, like Eleanor Palmer, are at high risk from fraud.
“We know of two families who own homes within five minutes and even they have rented additional accom-modation to gain an advantage over their neighbour’s children.”
Estate agent Ashley Gendler, a director at Burghley’s in Fortess Road, near Eleanor Palmer, said: “We have lots of people who want to live here because of Yerbury and Eleanor Palmer. Around admission time we get lots of people looking to buy or rent to get the right postcode. They will do whatever they have to do, hopefully legitimately, to get their children in.”
Town Hall education chief Labour councillor Angela Mason said the council would review the system: “It is quite wrong that people should ‘game’ the admissions process by moving into temporary accommodation close to the school of their choice. I have asked for a review of our admissions process looking at the way other councils deal with this problem.”
Last year, applicants were screened against credit reference agency records under a pilot scheme. The number of investigations has risen significantly using the new process and has resulted in more cases where there is evidence of fraud.
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Back to Eleanor Palmer
A key point here though is the degree to which Eleanor Palmer is complicit with this degree of fraud. Year in year out, the school knows who is and isn't a fair applicant, but chooses to be entirely passive in the face of this knowledge. And this from a school management which in other ways likes to boast about how progressive it is. Shaming.
Alex
There are other schools than Eleanor Palmer that are actually really decent. Don't be scared off by them. It's about the next six years rather than the last six years.
And now the new admission figures.
Please, CNJ, have a look at the story behind the latest round of admissions at this school announced on Wednesday. It is a scandal, and stinks of corruption.
Admissions Fraud
We bought our flat 11 years ago because we liked it and could afford it. We had yet to have our first child, and we were blissfully clueless about primary school admissions.
Perhaps we should have been more circumspect. As potential applicants our sons are at a severe disadvantage. Their parents are not religious and are not prepared to pretend to be. We also don’t like screwing over our neighbours or cheating.
Eleanor Palmer is only 0.134 of a mile from our door but nevertheless we were considered lucky to get our oldest boy in there 6 years ago.We quickly came to appreciate how truly wonderful it is to have your child in a local primary school. Our son had school friends on his doorstep; we had a community of other parents to call on for help, friendship and advice. Our child was able to play out on the streets with his friends because he was always only moments away from someone’s home and a caring parent.
It was nice to see that the school was also delivering great STATS and when the school received an outstanding in all 31categories of its OFSTED everyone was delighted. But those were not the primary things that we cherished.
However it is those achievements that have inevitably lead to the school becoming even more oversubscribed. Year on year the school’s distance criteria has shrunk and more and more children are dropped off in cars. Super organised parents get their ducks lined up early to try and score a place at a school with such glowing academic achievements and, lets be frank, such a middle class catchment. Some of these parents are prepared to go to great lengths, renting additional homes within spitting distance of the school, temporarily for the duration of the admissions period.
These parents take a belt and braces approach to their child’s education. They ignore the wealth of data that suggest academic success has less to do with attending an outstanding primary school and a great deal more to do with having supportive aspirant parents, a certain cultural capital and the finances to access tuition when needed.
Camden’s admissions team should be trying to protect schools and communities from the worst of these abuses. Yet the language in the Starting School Guide issued to parents is confusing and full of faltering language. In particular it fails to make clear that renting a home temporarily for the purposes of admission is misleading and wrong. Furthermore staff on the admissions team seem to take differing views on the validity of applications from temporary rentals.
Perhaps Camden should take a leaf out of Hackney Council’s starting school guide:
“We can’t accept a temporary address if you still possess a property that was previously used as a home address; nor will we accept a temporary address if it is used solely or mainly to obtain a school place.”
Failing to get a place at Eleanor Palmer won't be the end of the world. Failing to get a place at any local school will be harder to swallow but it is a possibility as all our local schools are very oversubscribed. But missing out on a local school place because someone was allowed to jump the queue would be the bitterest pill of all.
What about secondary schools?
This problem isn't just limited to primary schools. It happens in relation to secondary schools too. Camden School for Girls is a perfect example. Even if I didn't know it was happening for a fact, simple arithmetic would reveal that the reported radius from which they draw their intake is too small to contain the roughly 100 girls aged 11 accepted every year. I'm sure this is obvious to others too.
Council apathy
This issue is very divisive to the community. We are waiting to hear if our child will get a reception place at our local school (we live 0.1 miles from the school gate). We are aware of families who have used rented addresses to secure a place for their children which will most probably push us off the admissions list. If we don't get a place we will likely fall into the catchment "black hole", and most likely be offered a place miles away. Meanwhile people from miles away will be driving their kids to our local school. This is madness.
Camden council has been made aware of this practice yet seems to take the view that as long as people can supply proof of address at the time, then everything is fine. The council offers no assurance that strategic rental is viewed as fraudulent. Communities become divided with those who are able to exploit the council's apathy regarding this issue coming out on top.
I couldn't agree more, it is
I couldn't agree more, it is total madness. The more you think about the lack of logic or fairness, the more infuriating the whole situation becomes.
The council should be ashamed of their continued failure to address this issue.
What actions will the Council take?
There seems to be no apparent deterrent for those who shamelessly cheat the system.
There is a knock-on effect that lasts longer than the immediate school year. Parents rent to get their first child in, then have a stream of siblings in successive school years with guaranteed places. Each of these denies a local child a school place while the family have happily decamped to their permanent homes - often in other boroughs.
I'm sure Eleanor Palmer is not unique in this, but it is a perverse situation when children are delivered by car when the school catchment area is only 120 metres?
It is wrong that our local community school is no longer full of local children, while the children who should be there are being ferried elsewhere.
What action will the council take to punish those who are prepared to cynically abuse the system and their temporary neighbours?
Council has turned a blind eye to school place theft
I have a lot of sympathy for Tim Carew. Most parents applying for school places for the fist time assume, as we did, that the system is broadly fair. We all know that a place at our local school isn’t guaranteed, but do at least expect that the published admissions criteria apply equally to everyone and that the basic details of applications are checked, particularly where there is evidence of families ‘fiddling’ the crucial details of where they actually live. Instead, the Council turns a blind eye, even when alerted to suspicious cases.
I am sure that there will be many parents who have optimistically applied for reception places at their local schools this year with no idea that they are competing against ruthless strategic renters, determined to get their kids (and the subsequent siblings) into the best schools at whatever cost.
It is very encouraging to see that Angela Mason promises to address the issue, and aims to return some fairness to the admission process. Hopefully some clarity over Camden’s position on admissions fraud will deter people from cheating in future, and mean that children like Tim Carew’s daughter don’t find themselves trekking across the borough because someone with better resources has pushed them out of their local school. It would be nice to see our local community schools being available to children who actually live, long term, in the local community.
School admissions fraud
Not only are people getting school places fraudulently they are also reducing the available housing stock. Renting nearby 1 or 2 bedroom flats pushes demand and therefore rents which adversely affects the ability of other people to find and afford a property. Those committing this type of address fraud seem to have no qualms about stepping over their neighbour's children or anyone else just trying to rent a flat.
Not just Eleanor Palmer though
Top state schools in Camden face the same problem. Some parents use the home address of siblings and other relatives who live nearer to a particular school. So during application, they actually put down the home address of a family member to be closer to the school. I am sure Camden is more vigilant of this now, but in the past, people have gotten away with it. Clearly, all schools in Camden need to be just as good as the next so this problem won't persist.
Council chiefs are asleep at the wheel on this issue
This is really great news if the council is actually going to do something concrete to address school place theft. This has been going on for many years and despite being alerted to the problem several times, the council has been unwilling or unable to do anything to stop it happening. They have no idea just how aggressively Eleanor Palmer is being targeted by the knowing and well resourced. The admissions system should incorporate some mechanism to allocate places based on the number of years parents have lived in the community and paid council tax. This would discourage the practice of dropping into rented accommodation for the duration of the admissions round. It is going to be very interesting to see if the council manages to allocate the places fairly this year.
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