Why SA parents are faking addresses to flee failing schools

During playtime, a Gauteng-based primary school teacher asked her learners where they actually lived and was shocked to hear just how far they travelled every day.

“I was shocked when they mentioned places as far out as 40km away or what time they would wake up,” said the teacher, who requested to remain anonymous. “Parents have learnt how to work the system to get their kids a better education. It is what it is.”

According to recent data from TPN Credit Bureau, the experience of this teacher is not an isolated incident. In one surveyed school, 40% of applications contained false or misleading address information. At another school, a door-to-door verification process revealed that 51% of applicants did not live at the addresses they had submitted on their forms, while another school uncovered fraudulent addresses in 20% of Grade 1 applications. It is worth noting however, that the scope of the research is narrow, as the figures are drawn from a survey of just three Gauteng schools, where TPN found differing levels of misrepresentation.

Ashleigh Laurent, Legal Counsel at TPN Credit Bureau, explained that the data, collected throughout 2025, represents a nationwide crisis. “TPN serves schools across all South African provinces,” Laurent noted, adding that the trend is “across the board” rather than limited to specific districts.

“Parents understandably want the best possible education for their children. They are seeking out higher-performing, oversubscribed schools and bypassing feeder zone rules to get there,” Laurent said.

The methods used to bypass feeder zone rules have evolved far beyond simple white lies. Schools are increasingly reporting a surge in doctored municipal bills, generic letters of residence issued without verification, and entirely fabricated lease agreements.

“The fraud plays out in a mix of ways. We see a sophisticated rise in PDF editing, where official utility statements are meticulously altered to change names or formatting to place a family within a coveted catchment area,” said Laurent.

In many cases, parents provide a legitimate physical address belonging to a relative or friend, but they simply do not reside there. In response, schools now frequently conduct physical home visits.

Under the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act, submitting false information is now a criminal offence. Section 59(3) of the Schools Act makes it clear that misrepresentation can lead to fraud charges.

Yet, Laurent admits that the “criminal” element is more of a deterrent than a daily reality. “The primary risk remains application rejection or the cancellation of admission even after placement,” she explained. “Because it’s very difficult to prove legal intent, we predominantly see schools opting for disqualification rather than criminal prosecution.”

A tale of two area codes

Feed zone policies are designed to manage demand fairly by prioritising learners who live near a school, have siblings enrolled, or whose parents work nearby.

Daily Maverick spoke to a mother whose child was denied a Grade 8 placement despite living less than 2km from two public schools. Forced to enrol her child in a private institution at R14,000 a month, her frustration is palpable.

“You see it every January with the long-distance transport vehicles idling outside local schools, dropping off children who live 50km away while local residents are forced out. Parents will do anything for their kids. The government has failed people in the townships. I don’t blame all this fraud,” she said.

Yet, for the parents behind those long-distance commutes, the choice to bypass the law is often framed as a desperate rescue mission rather than a malicious act of fraud.

One mother, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, is unapologetic about her choice to use her brother-in-law’s address to secure a spot in a well-resourced catchment area. For her, the crime isn’t using a different address; it’s the state of the school in her own backyard.

“Just because I stay in the township doesn’t mean my child should suffer. The local schools here are a disaster. The toilets are a shame, there are 50 children in one class, the roof leaks and there are no sports or textbooks. If they would develop our local schools to the same standard as those in town, we wouldn’t be going there,” she said.

She views the crackdown on address fraud and the new threats of criminalisation under the Bela Act as a form of gatekeeping that punishes the poor for their lack of geographic mobility.

“You want our kids to suffer just because we were unfortunate enough to stay in the location. Maybe the people making these laws must take their own kids to township schools for a term, then they will understand exactly what parents are running away from,” she said.

Red herrings and the tale of two systems

While the “headline figures” from TPN Credit Bureau suggest a crisis of dishonesty, education activists suggest the narrative may be a “red herring.” Yolisa Piliso and Mahfouz Raffee of Equal Education (EE) point out a fundamental flaw in the panic: the data is drawn from a survey of just three Gauteng schools.

In a national system of more than 22,000 public schools, EE argues that such a tiny sample is hardly a representative basis for sweeping criminal legislation. Furthermore, provincial policies vary; the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape do not have explicit, department-determined provincial feeder zone policies.D
Piliso and Raffee explained that South Africa’s education system remains a “tale of two systems.” A minority of learners (roughly 25%) attend functional schools, while the majority (roughly 75%) are doomed to dysfunctional schools where they perform abysmally. In 2015, 82% of the country’s best-performing schools were wealthier Quintile 5 schools, whereas most schools achieving below 30% were classified as poor Quintile 1 or 2 schools.

Wealth inequalities mean good-quality schools are located in select areas where often only the very wealthy can afford to live. Poorer people, who are overwhelmingly black, are still effectively prevented from living in well-off areas with better educational opportunities.

“Against the backdrop of South Africa’s deeply unequal and lopsided education system, it comes as no surprise that many parents would try all means necessary, including making additional travel arrangements, sending their children to live with relatives or falsifying residence documents to save their children from dysfunctional schools and provide them with an opportunity to receive an adequate education,” the pair said.

Piliso and Raffee also said feeder zones were not neutral administrative tools; they were often instruments of spatial apartheid. Drawing on the research of Lisa Draga, the pair highlighted the landmark Constitutional Court case City Council of Pretoria v Walker.

In that judgment, Justice Albie Sachs noted that because of South Africa’s history, race and geography are “inextricably linked.” Therefore, applying a seemingly neutral geographic standard, such as a 5km radius, can be indirectly discriminatory. If a school in a wealthy, historically white suburb only admits those who live nearby, it effectively uses the high cost of property to bar black and poor learners from quality education.

While the Bela Act introduces penalties for misleading information, EE argues that punishing parents with six months’ imprisonment is “callous, if not cruel”.

In a recent constitutional matter, the Equal Education Law Centre (EELC) argued that default feeder zones defined spatially, further entrench and perpetuate racial exclusion. They said that since apartheid residential and workplace lines persist, reliance on place of residence for admissions intensifies existing inequalities.

Rather than using feeder zones as a proxy for exclusion, school governing bodies (SGBs) should be drawing transformative feeder zones to advance the access of poor and black students into well-resourced schools, EELC argued.

Fedsas CEO Jaco Deacon noted that the federation was fielding widespread complaints from member schools about the manipulation of the admissions process. These reports involve guardians providing fabricated residential data or multiple families claiming a single address to secure placements.

Deacon emphasised that this trend wasn’t localised as it spanned all nine provinces and was most aggressive at high-performing schools.

He argued that address fraud was more than just a paperwork hurdle, as it served as a glaring symptom of the massive performance gap between schools.

To stop the fraud, the uneven school performance had to be fixed.

Daily Maverick contacted the Gauteng Department of Education for comment. No response had been received by the time of publication. DM