Meanwhile...down in bambuland;
https://www.kidspot.com.au/parenting/real-life/in-the-news/i-lied-about-my-address-to-get-my-child-into-the-school-i-wanted/news-story/bfcfc807e4878e8a6966f089e02f8fef“I lied about my address to get my child into the school I wanted"
Parents desperate to get their kids into a school are using fake addresses and now officials are threatening to involve the police.#####
Been going on forever, seems to me.
Massive immigration seems to have caused a tightening of the rules now.
A child’s education is so important to a parent they will do almost anything to ensure their offspring is learning in the best possible environment.
That includes doing what they teach their children not to do - lie.
In most Australian states a child is zoned to a primary or high school. But some areas are more strict than others about allowing students to attend schools if they don’t live within it’s catchment, especially if the school is in high demand.
So mums and dads are pulling a risky move to ensure their child gets into the school they want by making up their home address.
Parents faking it to get what they want
*Sally, a mum-of-two tells Kidspot she used a fake address to get her son into kindergarten for 2017 at a school she isn’t zoned to.
The only way she could enrol her child there was if the principal of both her zoned school and her preferred school gave consent.
“We didn’t want him at our zoned school because of big numbers in the class, and we haven’t heard the best reviews,” she says.
“But they are very strict here, and the principal where we are zoned, refused to sign off. The school is huge, it’s bursting at the seams they should just let us go out of the zone.”
“I was a little bit scared, people were saying it’s fraud”
Sally’s four-year-old son has already been to pre-kindergarten classes at the preferred school for six months so the family is familiar with the schools, students and teachers.
She says she decided to use her friend’s home address on her son’s enrolment papers to get him into it, so he could continue there in smaller classes with closer teacher attention and more modern facilities.
“I was a little bit scared. But the friend’s address I used they have older kids so aren’t connected to the school. I was thinking how could it come back to me that it’s definitely not my address? People were saying it was fraud," she says.
“But you do what you need to do to fit into the school you want. My son needs to be challenged, he needs to have people who are there with him, the smaller classes will help him.”
"Sometimes there are rules, and sometimes there are rules to be bent”
Enrolment guidelines for parents at high-demand schools such as Brisbane State High School warn parents will be required to sign statutory declarations to provide legal evidence of their child’s eligibility to attend the school. The guidelines state those found to be misleading will be turned over to the police.
Mr Mara said dishonestly applying for enrolment at any school by providing false information constituted fraud.#####
Signing your name to false statements on a Statutory Declaration is big trouble for you if you get caught.
Putting a fake address on an application where the schools don't care much, small trouble.
There's big fraud...like ripping off investors for hundreds of millions of dollars, or any dollars.
Then there's little fraud.
Being tossed in prison over a school enrolment address...ridiculous.
IMO, paying someone to alter exam results is a far worse offence.
