Doing the best for your kids

It's a natural thing wanting the best for your kids, most parents will try and get them in the best schools they can in the areas they live and often a bit further if they think they can get away with it, especially if they can't afford private education (like most politicians can strangely enough).

Telegraph.

Local councils across England have revealed how children's school places had been cancelled or frozen amid concerns families lied on application forms.

Many parents are suspected of submitting false addresses in the catchment areas of the most sought-after secondary schools. 

The admissions watchdog has already suggested that the use of relatives’ addresses – normally grandparents with the same surname – is among the most common scam by parents attempting to play the system.

Other families have been found renting homes close to the best schools or even swapping houses with friends.

More than one-in-10 councils contacted by The Daily Telegraph said they had already uncovered examples of cheating in secondary school admissions. The numbers are expected to climb further in coming weeks as schools submit fresh evidence.

The disclosure comes just days after 10- and 11-year-olds across England were told which state secondary school they had got into for September.

In a report, Ian Craig, the Chief Schools Adjudicator, said many parents were employing “quite bizarre” tactics to cheat the system.

Speaking last week, Dr Craig said: “Although I had initially started off thinking that criminalisation might be a good thing, I think it became very clear that no political party was going to imprison parents for fraudulent applications.” 

Apparently there are some people out there that think parents wanting the best for their kids are criminals, making cheating  a criminal offence. Personally I think if all schools were as good as each other we wouldn't have a problem, that's not to say I think they should all be the same, just all pretty good as opposed to certain schools in certain areas getting hit by multiple applications and other being the last resort in a war zone. Of course many schools are only as good as the parents input themselves so a change in philosophy is needed too where everyone's involved in the education of kids. Dropping the state sanctioned propaganda would help too, Britishness lessons, religions, global warming climate change all stuff that they don't really need. A good grounding in English, maths and hard science would help.
Education is a serious business, unfortunately it's one of the few areas politicians in the UK can really interfere as just about everything else is controlled by the EU. This means its become an area of endless meddling for political point scoring.
Perhaps it's too serious a subject to allow politicians anywhere near it, assuming it can be sorted out.