Chief Justice upholds jail term for woman who lied about address to enrol daughter in popular primary school

SINGAPORE: The Chief Justice on Wednesday (Apr 22) upheld a one-week jail term for a woman who lied about her address in order to enrol her daughter in a popular primary school.

Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said the sentence was lenient and he would have effectively doubled it had he heard the case in the first place. He did not because he did not have material before him, such as submissions and case precedents, to inform such a decision.

The prosecution did not seek a higher sentence, only to uphold the one-week jail term. The 42-year-old Singaporean woman had appealed for a fine of S$9,100 (US$7,149) instead.

She began crying soon after the verdict and told her lawyer: "My daughter how?"

The woman had pleaded guilty in September to one charge each of giving false information to public servants and giving false information when reporting her change of address. A third charge was considered in sentencing.

The single mother cannot be named due to a gag order imposed by the court to protect the identity of her daughter, who is a minor. The gag order extends to the name of the school, which has since transferred the girl elsewhere.

THE CASE

The woman had enrolled her daughter at a school via distance-based priority admission during the 2023 Primary 1 registration exercise.

She used the address of a flat she was renting out, but was not staying at. This is not allowed under the Ministry of Education's rules.

She later sent an email to the school about changing her address to her partner's address, and the matter was flagged to the school management, which began investigating.

This was because the new address was outside the radius for priority admission, and the 30-month requirement to stay in the declared address had not been fulfilled.

The woman kept lying that she lived at the place and gave instructions to her tenants to say she stayed at the flat with her daughter.

On at least five occasions between August 2024 and October 2024, the woman lied so that her daughter would continue to be enrolled at the school.

As part of her plan to maintain the appearance of living at the address, the woman misreported her change of address to a registration officer.

She was unrepresented when she was sentenced to a week's jail in November, despite the prosecution seeking only a fine of S$10,000.

APPEAL ARGUMENTS

She hired a lawyer and appealed against the jail term on Wednesday, seeking a fine of S$9,100. Her lawyer, Mr Deepak Natverlal, argued that the lower court judge, District Judge Sharmila Sripathy-Shanaz, had erred in multiple ways, such as not adopting the submissions by the prosecution.

Chief Justice Menon interjected multiple times during the defence lawyer's arguments and pointed out that the arguments he was making were against what was written in the accepted statement of facts.

He said he was disappointed in how the woman was coming to court to distance herself from facts she had already pleaded guilty to.

When Mr Natverlal was talking about how his client thought it was "just an administrative thing", Chief Justice Menon interjected to say: "She lied five times."

"And she lied in order to beat the system," he continued.

Mr Natverlal tried to argue that his client had been staying at the declared address some of the time, but the Chief Justice repeatedly corrected him by pointing to the statement of facts.

The document, which the woman had admitted to, stated clearly that the woman was not living at the declared address during the material period.

At another point, Mr Natverlal addressed the issue of the harm done in this case, asking if a child was deprived of any placement in the school and saying the information was "not there".

"No but what do you think?" asked the Chief Justice. "What do you think is the inference to be drawn?"

He later said that at least one other child was not able to get in because of the woman's offence, even if the prosecution was unable to show the numbers.

"If every parent couched it this way, the entire system would break down. So why should your client get away with it?" asked Chief Justice Menon.

Mr Natverlal said he was not saying that his client should get away with it, but that the harm was not as serious as it was being made out to be.

He said his client was a single mother of two and this case needed a proportionate sentence that fit the offence.

"This is a sheer error of judgment on her part," he said. "This is the first time she's ever done something so silly. There ought to be some form of tempering of justice in this situation."

Deputy Public Prosecutor Chong Kee En, in responding to the defence's arguments, said it was not an excuse for the offender to say she did it for her child's educational benefit.

He said parents may sometimes regard their children as extensions of themselves, so having her child go to a distinguished school was essentially a benefit to herself.

The Chief Justice ran through his reasoning in detail for why the threshold was crossed in both possible ways in order to justify a jail term.

In one line of reasoning, he said there were at least seven aggravating factors in this case, which include heavy premeditation, active and deliberate steps to bolster the deception, repeating of the lie five times, and the instigation of seven other people to further the lie.

While the woman is technically "untraced" in that she has no previous convictions, Chief Justice Menon said the reality was that this was a series of offences and the main reason she did not have past convictions was that she "hadn't been caught".

"The appellant did not help herself by seeking to distance herself from the agreed statement of facts," he said, adding that this reflected "unwillingness to come to terms with her offending behaviour".

NO EXCUSE TO SAY YOU'RE HELPING YOUR CHILD

He said he wanted to make it clear that it was no excuse for the woman to say she wanted to help her child.

"It's not mitigating because we are talking about a shared communitarian resource," said the Chief Justice.

He noted that the offence had resulted in the school expending resources to investigate the offence and created a risk that public confidence in the Primary 1 registration system would become eroded.

"The Primary 1 registration exercise is meant to apply to all parents equally, fairly and transparently," said the judge. "The process is meant to ensure equitable distribution of a valuable public good - the ability to gain access to primary school. Its ability to function effectively depends on all parents generally believing that it is fair, equitable, and operates transparently."

He found nothing wrong in how the district judge arrived at her sentences. He said he thought the sentence was actually lenient for the charge of giving false information when reporting her change of address.

He added that if he had heard the case in the first instance, he would have been inclined to run the two individual one-week jail terms consecutively rather than concurrently, because the offences were distinct and protecting different legal interests.

Chief Justice Menon also rejected the argument by the woman that the district judge was not entitled to adopt a position that did not reflect what the prosecution had submitted.

He reiterated that sentencing is a matter to be dealt with by the court, which is not bound by what parties say.

At one point, Mr Natverlal was questioned about a line he wrote in his arguments, saying that the district judge appeared to have "already framed her mind" in the sense that she had decided she was already going to jail his client and was asking for more submissions to support this.

On questioning, the defence lawyer withdrew this submission and said he was not seeking to cast any aspersions on the court.

Chief Justice Menon said there was nothing at all wrong with a judge coming to court with a provisional view of what the sentence might be, having read the papers.

He allowed the woman two weeks to settle her affairs before beginning her jail term.