Balls announces school places inquiry
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Independent Minds
An inquiry to find out how many parents are "playing the system" to get their children into a school of their choice was ordered yesterday by the Children's Secretary, Ed Balls.
The schools adjudicator Ian Craig will investigate how many parents are giving false information and if councils have the right powers to deter parents from "breaking the rules".
The announcement came after a council dropped a legal case against a mother accused of using a false address to get her son into a popular state primary. Harrow Council in north London took Mrinal Patel, 41, to court for allegedly using her mother's address when she applied for a place for her five-year-old son, Rhys, at Pinner Park First School in January last year.
Mrs Patel said she was genuinely living at the address for a time. The place was withdrawn when she told the authorities she had moved back home with her husband. Rhys now attends a private school.
Harrow Council brought the case under the Fraud Act 2006. It said yesterday that "issues" had been raised over whether the act was applicable. Mrs Patel is believed to have been the first parent in England to face prosecution for school admissions fraud.
About the inquiry, Mr Balls said: "I've asked [Ian Craig] to look at whether the scale of this problem is more significant than we've thought, whether at the moment the powers which authorities have to withdraw places are being used, whether those powers are sufficient to deter parents from unfairly playing the system and breaking the rules, and whether we need to take further steps."
It will report back in November.
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Comments
Alison
Not sure anyone else is going to comment on this. It is, however, an important issue since it reflects significantly on the Government's 'choice' agenda. Mrs Patel is attempting to exercise real choice: she has seen the school she wants and she is trying to choose it. Of course, Harrow believes that she has cheated, but that is really not the point. She would not have had the sort of choice the government constantly boasts about unless she had flipped her address.
Ed Balls and Graham Badman are in the process as we write of trying to dismantle another form of parental choice in education: that of Home Education, in which working class children actually outperform their middle class peers in traditional schooling. This is another instance of the 'choice agenda' being subverted in reality. In the process, excellent learning is being vandalised.
It is time that the Independent addressed the Badman Review and its implications for civil liberties, the rights of the family and the role of the state. If you are able to do so, please familiarise yourselves with the issue and write about it. At the very least, please sign our petition at
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/EHErev
Thank you.
BUT - why should Ed Balls and this corrupt fag-end so-called Government 'hold an enquiry'....for heavens' sake this is the crew that 'fixed' the entry of their own children to the top-performing state schools or the 'special' religious school for the Blairs.
This corrupt lot could write a book about 'using the system'. Only when one of the 'little people' tries to do the best for their own child does the full weight of the law, and the local council, and MI5, MI6 and every other official body descend to kick the hell out of someone who's trying to do what's right for their child.
This is a Government of one law for them - and another for us.
Bring back Grammar schools, bring back Technical Colleges, bring back discipline, and bring back traditional education.
In the 1970s, The Labour Party destroyed a sound educational system by the insistence on comprehensives. Sweden had had comprehensives for years and just as we were switching to the comprehensive system Sweden was cancelling and going back to their traditional system. We never learn; Labour destroys everything - but never for themselves.
Tigermoth
Many thanks.
Roger