Lies, a £3,000 sweetener and the man who had six homes
Bev Feather, head of Clare House Primary School in Bromley, is an experienced sleuth when it comes to the ploys parents pull to get their children into her heavily oversubscribed school.
A small school with about 200 pupils, Clare House scores highly in national English, maths and science tests and is bombarded with five applications per place.
Dr Feather can reel off a long list of the lies she has been told in her nine years as head. She was even offered £3,000 by a parent "to help the decision-making process".
Naturally, she refused, saying that, like many popular primaries, she will only take children with brothers or sisters in the school, or those who live within its catchment area.
Some lies were easier to spot than others.
"There was one man who gave six different addresses applying to schools throughout the borough. When you are that stupid, it's pretty easy to check you."
Others were more cunning. "We send letters to all the new people asking for a response by a certain date. I had hand-delivered the letter to one lady.
"She said she lived across the road and I went up to the block of flats to put the letter through the box. The office rang her three days later but she claimed she hadn't received the letter.
"She gave me all sorts of stories, like her daughter had got it or she was away. I asked her to come to the office and I confronted her and said, 'I don't think you live there' and she got up and walked out the door.
"She didn't say anything, but she understood that I understood."
One father, when shown the evidence of "anomalies" in his application, decided he would send his child to "another school with a broader curriculum", Dr Feather continued.
"What we do with all the families we are suspicious of is call them in to have an appointment with me and the senior admissions officer and we go through all the documentation."
They had to provide a "package" of proof as it was easy to get child benefit books changed or get utility bills for addresses that were not permanent homes.
One parent arrived with an absurdly low gas bill of ?12. "It's that kind of thing that means there's something wrong."
In her first eight years in the job, she dealt with just one fraudulent application but the number has jumped to four in a year.
League tables meant parents moving to an area whose schools had the best results. "I would do exactly the same - except for the lying and cheating part."
