Parents will face jail time for faking addresses
10 August 2012 11:24 AM | Updated 5:16 PM
They put in long hours of volunteer work to get their children into their primary school of choice.
Now, some parents are even resorting to beating the system by cheating on their “home” addresses.
A ruling by the Ministry of Education states that children living within the 1-km radius of a school will have priority in their applications to enrol there.
The Straits Times reported that since primary school registrations started in July, many parents have complained online that some are using “fake addresses” to gain an advantage. What these parents do is to rent an apartment near their school of choice and use the new address in their children’s application form. They do not live or move into these rented units and will terminate the rental once their children have been admitted into the school.
Yet, parents who are found to have done this may face jail time for the fraud, the paper reported, quoting a spokesperson from the Education Ministry. The children will have to transfer to another school even if they have been admitted.
Some parents are saying that registration to good primary schools has become a rich person’s game. Many renowned primary schools, such as Nanyang Primary School, Raffles Girls’ Primary School and Methodist Girls’ School, are located in the Bukit Timah area, a prime property district.
As a result of the Education Ministry policy, those living in the condominiums and bungalows located there would already have a priority to these schools. Rental apartments in the area are also not cheap, meaning the parents who take a second address would have to have sufficient financial backing to rent the unit and use the new address for registration.
Property agents who spoke to the paper listed some common traits they have observed among these parents looking to rent apartments: 1.They are usually young parents looking for apartment at the end or start of the year.
2.The young parents would claim that they need to just rent the place for a while as they are waiting for the completion of their new home. 3.A normal rental contract would be for one or two years, but these parents are willing to pay more for a shorter term.Some of them want the apartment for just six months.
4.The young couples would ask the agent which block is located within a 1-km radius of good schools. Such behaviour has made parents feel that good schools are gradually becoming something for the rich.
Ms Aileen Lee, 40, a manager interviewed by the paper said: “I cannot afford two years’ rent in a fancy condo, but some can, and these schools would gradually be filled with rich kids.” Another parent Ms Felicia Seet, 32, a physiotherapist, told the paper that if parents “dare to pull such tricks just to get a place, it can be traumatising for the children”.
“What kind of values are they teaching them then?” she asked. When contacted by The Straits Times, the Education Ministry said that such cases are quite rare, but parents who are found doing this will be handed over to the police.
As for whether students have to be living at the same address for all six years of their primary school education, the spokesperson says it will assess them on a case-by-case basis. In 2007, lawyer Tan Sok Ling was jailed for two months after he rented an apartment in Bukit Timah and used the address in his daughter’s application to Methodist Girls’ School.
The apartment was later rented out to another tenant who used the address to apply to the same school. The school called the police after discovering that two applicants have used the same address for registration.
Even as some parents are calling for stricter checks and rules, schools say such cases are rare and it is also hard to check. All five schools who spoke to The Straits Times said that they take the residential address stated on the parents’ identity cards and they would investigate only if there are complaints. They did not want to say if they had come across any complaints.
Ms Jenny Yeo Bee, principal of South View Primary School, said that the trust between the school and the parents is very important. Parents also have to sign a statement saying that the information they have provided are correct. “We have more than 200 students coming in each year, where do we start investigating?”
