PLC Public Sector:
The Chief Schools Adjudicator report, commissioned by the Secretary of State following the highly publicised school application fraud case pursued (and then dropped) by the London Borough of Harrow, makes interesting reading. The remit of the investigation was to find out the scale of the problem and whether the sanction in the School Admission Code – withdrawal of the school place – was a sufficient deterrent for parents from making fraudulent or misleading applications to oversubscribed and popular schools.
Although the majority of the responding local authorities considered that the sanctions in the Code were sufficient, a significant minority (40%) did not. The report concludes that the current system means parents have nothing to lose by lying on their applications and that additional disincentives are necessary to deal with what many responding local authorities consider to be an increasing problem.
The report recommends that, where parents have knowingly gained a school place by deception, the Government considers:
- Further sanctions beyond withdrawing the school place; and
- Clarification, possibly in the Code, that they will be unable to claim a sibling link for subsequent children applying to the same school (assuming that the school place obtained by deception for the first child is not withdrawn).
It will be interesting to see what those tougher sanctions may be. Almost all of the local authorities responding suggested that prosecution should be available as a sanction, with the possibility of a custodial sentence or a substantial fine. Although the Government’s intention has never been to criminalise parents, it recognises that the issue is a serious one and the Chief Schools Adjudicator has been asked to report by the end of February 2010 on how the problem should be addressed.
Although parents who are tempted to make a fraudulent application for a school place will be aware from all the publicity surrounding the issue that the only sanction for local authorities is to withdraw the school place (and many local authorities are reluctant to do so after the child has started at school), local authorities should reinforce the message by stating on every school admission form their intention to investigate those who give fraudulent or misleading information.