A secondary school principal says some Auckland schools are experiencing a "massive spike" in the number of students being fraudulently enrolled — with some parents going to great lengths to attempt to cheat the system.
The issue was recently highlighted at Auckland's Macleans College, where nine students in the last year were reportedly kicked out after it was discovered they had been fraudulently enrolled.
The NZ Herald reported the discrepancies were discovered after the school decided to do a "blanket request" for power bills to verify the addresses of the roughly 700 students enrolled since July last year.
Secondary principals' association president Vaughan Couillault told Breakfast this was not an isolated incident, and would continue as long as the population in Auckland continued to increase.
"What we've got is a situation where, as we all know, there was some significant immigration last year, and that's flowed on to some more secondary students this year. My area of expertise is obviously in secondary, but I'm sure it is occurring in primary too.
"We've got in particular regions of Auckland, significant roll growth where schools are increasing by 300 to 400 students over 18 months."
He said the problem spanned from parents simply lying, right through to purchasing property and moving in for a short period of time to enrol their students before moving out again.
"One's very fraudulent, in that your just lying on a piece of paper, the other one is if you have means, you're sort of buying an 'address of convenience' when purchasing in a particular zone. Or renting, so renting in a school zone, get your enrolment sorted and move back out to the property where you live after a few months."
"For those of us experiencing a massive spike in this sort of activity, we're having to employ specialists and that comes at a cost that is not being put back into the classroom."
Lengthy process to remove students for wrongful enrolment
Couillault said it was "about a two-to-three-month process" to identify the problem, gather evidence, and present that to the board and parties involved, as he said the board made the final decision to unenrol students, not the principals.
He said there was "no real provision" in the Education Act — where the enrolment zones were crafted from — for parents who attempted to enrol their child in a school close to where they work for their own convenience.
"For every one of those parents who have behaved fraudulently, they do have a school that the[ir child] is in zone for that they can go to. So they're not being denied an education option, they're just not being able to go to the one they want to because it's more convenient or whatever.
"Everyone pretty much lives in an 'in zone area' to a local school and freedom of choice in the education market isn't quite where people want it to be, but the provision of a public good is a complicated thing so that's why it is why it is."
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