SCHOOL principals are enlisting the help of private investigators to catch out parents who provide false addresses to secure a place for their child at some of Sydney's top schools.
An investigations firm caught out 23 parents who were fudging enrolment paperwork last year, with families in the eastern suburbs and Mosman among the worst offenders.
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And it's not just the principals using such tactics - some parents are hiring investigators to make checks on prospective rivals who also want their child to attend a certain school.
It comes amid fierce competition for places at government-run schools such as Cheltenham Girls High School, Killara High School and Epping Boys High School as well as independent schools which perform well in NAPLAN and the HSC.
In a recent Australian Scholarships Group survey, 60 per cent of parents said they would rent or buy a house near a top school to get their child into a preferred institution.
About 17 per cent admitted they would use a false address to fool school administrators into believing they were locals, and 14 per cent would personally appeal to the principal.
Other parents - about 9 per cent - said they would have their child baptised to get into a good Catholic school.
Impact Investigations and Security manager John Bergson said his company had been enlisted to help catch cheating parents, with clients including both public and private schools.
"We see a lot of cases where the school contacts us and says 'look we suspect parents A, B and C aren't living in the given address that they have provided, can you look at it'?" he said.
At a cost of $5000, Mr Bergson will conduct surveillance of the property and search for official land ownership records to determine whether the parent is telling the school the truth.
"Last year we found 23 cases which came back positive and the parent was not living at that particular address," he said.
At Killara High School, students wishing to enrol must reside on one of 322 local streets and parents must provide property deeds, tenancy agreements and utility bills to prove they live at an eligible address.
In Willoughby, Forsyth Real Estate principal James Snodgrass said 35 per cent of families buying property in the area wanted their children to be in the catchment zone of good schools such as Willoughby Girls High.
Families unable to buy a property in the suburb would rent until a house came on the market, he said.
"People come in with a map in their hand and they know what the school catchment areas are."
Dr Mark Turkington, acting executive director of Sydney's Catholic Schools, said he was not aware of any data suggesting that there was a widespread problem of children being baptised to get into a school.
"While there may be occasional incidents, we have a clear enrolment policy and criteria. Principals and local school enrolment committees apply these criteria with great care and professionalism," he said.
Charles Rahim, owner of Charlie's Angels Consultants, said his clients included parents who suspected other families of lying about their address.
"We have had instances when the clients are other parents who are competing to get their kids in the school and they come with information that someone else has applied but they don't live in that area, then they want us to get evidence that they don't live in the catchment area," he said.
"In an instance where the substitute address has been provided to us, we check out that address to see whether the parent is actually doing their activities from that area or not."
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