Desperate times, desperate measures

This year, with the financial crisis in full swing, the soaring cost of living and independent schools pricing themselves out of the market, catchment area frenzy, to secure a place in top state schools, is gripping the nation like never before.

Anxious parents are willing to lie, cheat, and even change their religion to get their offspring into the right school.

Enter the catchment area cheat, the parents who will do anything to get their children into the school of their choice and, while cheating to get into a school is nothing new, never have the stakes been as high. 

Pressure for places in the UK’s best state schools is intensifying with state grammar schools; leading the way. And, as Gordon Brown tells us, extraordinary times call for bold and far-reaching solutions.

 

Last year, across London, one in every 14 parents failed to get any of their six school choices. This year it will be worse.

Catchment areas are already shrinking as parents who had planned on private schooling join the battle for places in the best state schools.

“I never thought we’d be looking at the state sector,” says Emma Whitworth, mother of three. Like many families, the Whitworths are reining in their spending in anticipation of hard times ahead. They, along with other middle class parents who in rosier times would be sewing name tapes on the local prep school blazer, have been banging on state school gates to try and secure a place for September 2009. Many parents, who in previous years would have qualified, are finding themselves just outside the catchment area this year. 

School admissions - ins and outs

As school admission battles hot-up parents have been warned that if a child gains a place on the basis of false information, their child may be removed from the school. Poole in Dorset made headlines when it used anti-terrorist legislation to spy on three families suspected of catchment cheating.

At the same time, LAs are becoming more vigilant in their monitoring.  An investigation by the Local Government Association earlier this year found that, of 31 councils surveyed, 77 per cent reported an increase in the numbers of parents found to be lying on school admissions application forms.  

We know what schools say their catchment area and entrance criteria are but our own eyes show us parents pulling up at the school gates after motoring in from a distinctly non-catchment direction. So how can you find out where the pupils at each state school really come from? 
 

Real catchment areas  - does a foot in the door mean living a mere few feet from the school?