Mother prosecuted for forging document to win a school place

A mother who forged documents to secure a school place for her daughter has been fined £500 and sentenced to 100 hours’ community service in one of the first prosecutions of “education tourism”.

Lura Pacheco, 34, from Chadwell Heath, in Barking and Dagenham, had been desperate for her 11-year-old daughter to attend a secondary school in neighbouring Havering borough where schools have a better reputation, a court heard.

The mother-of-two, who works for an international recruitment company, confessed to submitting a forged tenancy agreement for a home in nearby Hornchurch with a bogus property company to hoodwink the council into offering her a place.

But town hall investigators uncovered the forgery when the property’s real owner received the offer and alerted the local authority.

The Portuguese national admitted one forgery offence committed on December 13, 2013.

Sentencing at Barkingside magistrates’ court, presiding magistrate Michael Peacock said: “You are obviously a very good and conscientious mother and like all good mothers you want your kid to go to the best school available.

“I think the public are very aware of the lengths people go to to try and secure that. We hear of people buying expensive houses in expensive streets and so on in order to get into a certain catchment area. But whatever you do it’s got to be within the law.

“What you did was dishonest. It was cheating, cheating the system. It was unfair to people who would have wanted that place if you had succeeded.” Speaking after the hearing, Pacheco told the Standard: “Mums just want the best for their children, they want the best education for them possible. I am still shaken by this experience.”

The court heard how a friend of Pacheco had offered to produce the forged tenancy agreement for a home in Hornchurch, within Havering borough, using fake firm Easy Property Services. It could have secured a place for her daughter at either Brittons Academy, Chafford School, Frances Bardsley School for Girls, Sacred Heart of Mary Girls School or Bower Park Academy.

Giles Morrison, representing Havering council, said: “She wanted her daughter to get into a Havering school as these are generally better and she was aware that at this time her address was covered by Barking and Dagenham.

“It [the offence] is, I am told, something Havering council is very concerned with in the borough and there might be a number of other prosecutions that might happen in the future. But this is thought to be the first of its kind.”