Should sibling's rights be reduced for renters that move awa Post Reply

[erinisle22]

Apparently the local authority isn't able to open schools anymore and has to approach sponsors to open free schools instead. I went to the consultation on the proposed new Tooting Primary School and the sponsor there is the Graveney School.

If you are approached by someone looking to open up a school in Wandsworth, sign up even if you don't think you'll send your children there. We do need more school places. And we need parents to get involved to improve the current ones too.

[MGMidget]

I just wanted to add that I don't think there's anything wrong in itself with people moving into the area and renting close to the school, its planning to do it short term and then quickly moving back to a permanent address or out of the area that bothers me!

[kiwimummy]

agreed. it's not renters that irritate me. it's people who rent second homes temporarily just for school admission when they have a primary residence outside the catchment zone.

[schoolgatesmum]

One of the key things here is that people get very hung up on Honeywell and Belleville. People move to the area to try and get their children into these schools. If they don't get in, do they send them to a different state school or do they go private and wait for a place to come up? If Honeywell and Belleville weren't such popular schools would some of these people even consider them an option? I think probably not. So how can the council plan effectively? What you're really saying TPTP is that there aren't enough places at Belleville and Honeywell. The other local state schools (High View, Alderbrook, Falconbrook and Wix to name a few) aren't heavily oversubscribed but they would be if a lot of the people who didn't get into Honeywell or Belleville hadn't subsequently gone private.

[lilimum]

I feel sibling rights should be removed for all, if family moves away. I live on the doorstep of An outstanding school, and was initially not offered a place in reception.
Even though my child attended nursery there. When I investigated I was told around 50 of the 60 places went to siblings. To my horror the majority of these families had previously bought/rented to get the first child in then moved away. As you get more house for your money further out. So although I'm just a few meters away was not offered a place,but put on waiting list, Yet people coming from as far as Kingston had a place due to older siblings. This is a ridiculous situation. Also I sit on appeals and admissions panel. The council is not obliged to place all children from one family in the same school. I've heard of families having to go to 2or even 3 schools.
Yes. Plenty of people play the system. Renting to get a catchment address. The council check council tax bill. Electoral registers. Bills etc. if the family is registered on all then they are legal. Until rules change. I can't see situation improving.

[ellesmum]

I reiterate that it IS playing the system...just as much as having numerous children to claim the benefits is. If it costs £15k per child for a private school, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that in terms of total cost, if you have several children, it works out less in the long run to rent closer to Belleville or Honeywell for the 9 months it takes to get child no.1 into the school than it will cost to put all of them through private. It's a no-brainer...unless you have morals. And I'm sorry, but you DO have to lack morals to do that. I had it suggested to me that we do that, seeing as we moved in December anyway, but I felt it was wrong to move closer to one of the schools with the intention of moving again once our girl was in. Plus, because estate agents/landlords know that this practice exists, they exploit the situation & charge higher rents. We can't afford to pay huge amounts of rent OR private school fees, so will have to do the best we can with what we get.
To be honest, if you change a lot of the pro-short term rental statements into text speak, the justifications sound much like those given by people who won't work & prefer to stay on benefits, where they won't take a job scrubbing toilets or stacking shelves because they see it as being beneath them. They want a managerial position without having the correct qualifications. And whilst scrubbing toilets will always just be cleaning someone else's loo, accepting a place at a less desirable school near the permanent family home as opposed to playing the system in order to get a place at one of the "best" schools gives parents, pupils & teachers the opportunity to improve it & change it into something more desirable.
However, it's a gamble. Do I want to gamble with my child's education? The thought terrifies me! But then I look at my own primary schooling, where I attended 6 primaries, 2 of which were in another country, and 2 being in rough inner city schools which were probably a lot worse than High View! I survived...in fact, I more than survived - I excelled. Possibly because I experienced a lot more than my contemporaries...who knows? However, perhaps if parents stopped being obsessed with getting their children into the 3 must-have schools, & some of the children who WOULD have gone to those schools (if their parents had followed the urge to relocate for a year to get the place) were instead spread between the Average/Good schools on their doorsteps, the mix of children would then help to raise those schools to Good-Bordering-on-Outstanding, thus benefitting ALL the children, not just those who are privileged to have well off parents? I believe this happened with Swaffield, when children from across the borough who failed to get any of their chosen schools were offered places in newly created classes at the school? The standards have gone up considerably.
I have to repeat all this to myself several times a day when I start panicking about schools, though!
But as far as siblings go...no, they shouldn't automatically get a place if they are outside the catchment area. Apparently, where my friend teaches in Essex, children in the catchment area without siblings have a higher priority than children with siblings at the school who live out of catchment. Same with many other areas. So you either accept that you need to do two school runs, or move child no.1 to the new school. Again, as with the benefit system...have as many children as you want, but don't expect everyone else to have to make sacrifices to accomodate your family.

[Sagittarius]

Hi All,

As I said earlier, I still believe that siblings should be allowed to be in the same school. It is impossible to find a fair solution that will not penalise someone "innocent". I will not go into what I think is right/wrong, it is such a complicated subject and it would take too long. I just wanted to say that, with more and more schools becoming academies, the council will no longer have the right to enforce changes in admission policies, therefore I doubt it will spend money and resources in investigating where/when people rent... This problem is not restricted to our area, it has been there for a long time, it's just that now that we are directly involved, we are actually taking an interest.

I may be wrong, but I agree with the mum who suggests that some of you may be magnifying the problem. Yes there are a minority of parents who play the system, but in the majority of cases there are plausible explantions for the "evil" you see at the school gates. Just to give you some examples: I have a friend who lives very close to her school, yet sometimes she drives her son to school because it's on her way to work. Some of the children going to Belleville or Honeywell that you see at the bus stop live in nearby estates, if you read the admission policies you will see that children into care have priority over children living closest to the school. A friend of mine lives (horror horror) over 800 metres from the school and her (only) daughter was offered a place in Y4, she accepted it and now she takes the bus to go to school.

Anyway, just my thoughts...

[tooposhtopush]

refusing to stack shelves and wanting a managerial position is the same as renting a flat, moving in and accepting what is legally yours?

eh?

[ellesmum]

TPTP - It's an analogy. Quite a simple comparison really - stacking shelves = not so good school, managerial position = Outstanding school.
I'm very glad for you that you can afford to buy whatever it is you want in life. Some people do not have that option. They have worked their butts off to buy or rent homes which may be just a few meters outside the catchment area, which has constricted just that little bit more because a child who will not be living that close to school permanently has taken up temporary residence. Renting a flat near a school is not, in itself, a "crime" (metaphorical, not literal, just so we're clear), but if you own a home, that you retain possession of, half a mile, a mile, or more away & rent the second property near the school purely with the intention of gaining a school place, thus taking a place from a child who genuinely lives in the catchment area, and immediately surrender possession of the rented flat once Junior has successfully started at that school, then that is wrong. If you honestly can't see why this is wrong, then I despair of what morals you teach your children. To have the attitude of "take what you want, it's rightfully yours" is infuriating, because that's at the root of so many problems. Nothing is "rightfully" anyone's. WE pay taxes, too, but I don't believe that that means I am entitled to any services over & above anyone else.
And, here's a novel idea, if there's a school on your doorstep which maybe isn't doing quite as well as the Belleville's or the Honeywell's, why not work towards making it better? Aside from anything else, if the effect is that living next door to a great school raises house prices & makes it a desirable place to live, you stand to make a great deal of money either by selling it or renting it out to parents who want to get their kid into that school.

Oh, & again, just to be clear, I do not mean "You" specifically, but more anyone who thinks it's OK to exploit a legal loophole.

[harriedmum]

I know I'll probably get shot down, but I think there is a really simple solution to this problem:
if you live in the catchment area for a school your children should go there. If you move, so should your kids. The sibling policy should only apply if the family is still at their original catchment area address, to guard against the catchment being 330m one year and 300m one or two years on. Any hopping to and fro should be easily detectable from the Council Tax bills. The idea that you get your first child in and the rest of the siblings follow regardless of where you are currently living is causing this stress and mess of a system. No system will be completely fair and no school place allocation will completely overcome the disadvantage faced by many children who parents have less resources or less time to invest in them, but if we are lucky it might deflate rental prices and enable those genuine long term renters to have a bit more stability and not face rents being pushed up by the short term market of those renting to get their kids into a school. I don't know why Wandsworth persists with this silly system - I can only imagine it is to their electoral advantage. I've seen the stress families go through with this system and it's very sad.

[Minnie]

Can I dare ask what peoples opinions are on temporarily renting closer to the original Belleville site in order to get a place at the new site, the street where I currently live!

[mgb]

harriedmum, I completely agree and kudos to you for having the nerve to say it first. This was the rule where I went to school and despite popular opinion no one was worse off for it, it kept families together and because moving school was common we looked forward to meeting a few new friends each year.

[stayathomemuminsw11]

RE this:

'Can I dare ask what peoples opinions are on temporarily renting closer to the original Belleville site in order to get a place at the new site, the street where I currently live!'

It is very tricky. The reason Belleville opened up another class was there was a shortage of school places in a particular area (i.e. BTC) as far as I understand it. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on your view!) there wasn't space to include this class on the original Belleville site.

Therefore, the 'satellite' site over on Forthbridge Rd isn't really 'meant' to serve people living very nearby, because originally, if they had applied to Belleville from that address, they wouldn't have got a place, because they lived too far away. So, in a sense, if places started being taken up by people who lived near the satellite site, no problem has really been solved, as people BTC will still be short of places.

However, I do understand that it must be frustrating to live near a brand new, good 'school' and not be able to send your children there-but I guess you have to try and keep in mind that it's NOT a separate school, just an extension of Belleville, and therefore the criteria to go is the same as for Belleville 'proper' for want of a better word.

I don't know much about the schools up that way, I know there is Wix (Wandsworth council) (which I was VERY impressed with when I looked round), and Macaulay (CofE, Lambeth Council) and a few others (Lambeth) like Bonneville, Allen Edwards, Clapham Manor, Glenbrook, King's Avenue, Larkhall etc, but I don't know how far these are away from the Forthbridge Rd site of Belleville....

It is tricky.

It is an issue which no one will EVER agree on, no matter what decisions are taken.

To the person who said siblings should only get in if they are still living at their original address, and otherwise the older child should have to move school, and go to a school local to them, what about if you lived in a small flat when your first child went to school, and I mean genuinely lived there, but had to move to somewhere bigger when you had another child, but it was only say, 300meters away from your original address? The school your first child would be at would still definitely be your local school... It's just with the tiny 'catchment areas, you wouldn't have got in if you lived there originally. ' Very difficult.

[MGMidget]

Minnie, so would you be planning to move back to where you currently live after your temporary rental then? If so, you would be completing an application form claiming your temporary rental address as your permanent address, then moving back to your permanent address. I don't agree with that nomatter which street you live in! I sympathise with you having a school so close to you that you aren't eligible for but the reasons for this have just been outlined. There was previously another school at the same location too which you may not have been eligible for either.

Harriedmum, yes I agree. It would be interesting to know if any other council has adopted the policy that if you move house you lose sibling rights. Anyone know?

StayathomemuminSW11 - if you moved house you would simply be on a par with any other applicants without a sibling applying from the same distance as you. It could be the nearest school for those applicants too so just as difficult for them too. If you didn't get your next child in you would have the option of doing two school runs or moving the older child to the same school as the younger child. I don't think moving schools is so terrible - I did it as a child and a few others on here have said the same.

[supergirl]

What Harriedmum is saying (and i torally agree) is that if all sibling rights are remove if a family move out, years on the catchment will then be bigger. So you d still be able to get smthg bigger (hopefully prices will deflate too) and still br in the catchment.