PLC Public Sector reports:
In the coming months education lawyers up and down the country will have one eye on developments in Harrow. A recent survey found that 50 local authorities withdrew 162 school places this year as a result of so called school application fraud. No doubt each withdrawal was accompanied by a suitably worded “slap on the wrists” letter. However, the London Borough of Harrow has gone one step further.
As has been widely reported in the media, Harrow has taken Mrinal Patel to court, alleging that she fraudulently completed a school application for her son to attend a heavily over subscribed school. Harrow are seeking to rely on section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006, which will mean that they face two key problems. They will need to show:
- Mrs Patel dishonestly made a false representation. While council tax records support Harrow’s case, Mrs Patel claims that due to marital difficulties she was living with her mother at the address she submitted at the time of the application. This may be difficult to disprove.
- That in making this false representation, Mrs Patel sought to make a gain. A gain is defined as extending only to a gain in money or other property. Harrow’s case will therefore rely on a school place being deemed “property”.
Clearly, it will not be an easy task. However, perhaps Harrow’s primary objective is for the case to provide a suitable deterrent to others thinking of abusing the school application system. That may just be underestimating the determination of parents though.
Whilst LB Harrow’s decision to prosecute is an innovative (if harsh) legal route to addressing the very real problem of false representations made in order to obtain school places, does such a gain to the parent really constitute ‘property’? A school place cannot be sold or traded and has no value to anyone other than the child that has received it. Moreover, a school place in itself is not a gain, it is a right. Ms Patel would have thought (and Harrow will, unattratively for a local authority, be relying on) the place at the particular school being better than a place at another school. Setting aside the lack of transferability of a school place, is this the ‘gain’ that Ms Patel attempted to procure for her child. If so, is it sufficiently certain in its scope to constitute a gain for the purposes of the Fraud Act?
It has today been confirmed that Harrow has decided not to proceed with this prosecution. The problems outlined in the post above are, it seems, insurmountable. The question to ask now is where this leaves local authorities trying to clamp down on so called school application fraud. The Fraud Act is clearly not a viable option, which leaves removing a child’s place the only real remedy. This hardly seems to be a deterrent. The Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, has responded by asking for a report on how widespread the issue is.
Do you agree with this approach? Is this an issue that the Government should look at? Is there an appetite for legislation that will allow a more draconian punishment?
Scrap all catchment areas and undertake a lottery. Then there can be no fraud.
No catchment areas for grammar schools either. Highest mark gets the place.
Property prices are now out of the equation.