British parents are lying to authorities about their children, and even faking addresses, in order to obtain their own kids a decent primary school place.
The Mail reports that due to high immigration and birth rates in the UK, school places are at an all-time premium, with local authorities taking measures to try and stop schools becoming oversubscribed.
Around 100,000 children may miss out on their first school choice, and the Local Government Association has warned that Britain needs to create an extra 130,000 places by 2017 in order to keep up with demand. A survey revealed that in the London borough of Lambeth, parents were suspected of lying to obtain their children a school place. As a result, only ‘conditional offers’ of attendance have been made while investigations take place.
Britain’s immigration authorities have been left humiliated in recent years. High-ranking members of the Labour government of the early 2000s have now had to publicly admit that they underestimated immigration into the UK by “a factor of ten”. Earlier this week it was reported that 350,000 immigrants were missed because inspectors were counting at the wrong airports.
The Mail quotes the Office for National Statistics, which has claimed that the UK population is “set to increase by almost ten million over the next 25 years.”
A Department for Education spokesman said: “We are increasing the number of good school places by tackling under performance and opening new free schools and academies.
“We have more than doubled to £5billion the funding available to local authorities to create new school places and we are allowing good schools to expand without the restrictions and bureaucracy they faced in the past.”
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