LGO issues wake-up call to councils over school admission appeals

The Local Government Ombudsman has called on councils to improve significantly their performance in handling school admission appeals, warning that “the same faults seem to arise again and again”.

In a report published today, School admissions: are parents and pupils getting a fair hearing?, the LGO revealed that more than a quarter (28%) of the 1,195 complaints on schools admissions in 2010/11 resulted in some kind of remedy being recommended, typically a fresh appeal.

The report pointed out the areas where problems frequently occur, such as communication before and after the hearing, the issue of whether schools can take more pupils, panels failing to act impartially, procedural mistakes during the hearing, and notes of the hearing.

The common faults include:

• The admission authority failing to provide adequate written information in good time before the appeal hearing about why the child was not offered a place and why the school is unable to admit additional pupils
• The admission authority presenting parents with arguments and information orally at the hearing rather than allowing them to consider the information in advance
• The admission authority failing to provide evidence that the school cannot accommodate additional pupils
• A panel failing to challenge the admission authority’s case that admitting more pupils would be detrimental
• A panel accepting an argument that the school is full – even when the school later acknowledges it could admit a few more pupils
• The presenting officer entering the meeting with the panel and remaining with them after the hearing, leaving parents unsure about the panel’s impartiality
• Panels going back to admission authorities for clarification of information after the parents have left, or even calling back the presenting officer
• Panels asking questions of the admission authority but not of the parents
• Panels hearing cases affecting different members of the same family as one appeal with one hearing
• Panels not satisfying themselves that the admission arrangements were applied correctly to the child in question. “These concerns apply to all admission arrangements, but distance (from home to school) and faith criteria can give rise to particular concerns"
• Panels taking account of irrelevant information
• Poor recording by the clerk of the panel’s deliberations, decisions, reasons for decisions, and results of panellists’ voting
• Decision letters failing to give reasons for decisions, so parents cannot understand why their appeal did not succeed
• Failure in the letter to refer to and deal with a major point relied on by the parents.

The report makes a number of recommendations to all admission appeal panels. It said they should:

1. provide clear written information to parents in good time before the appeal hearing
2. make sure their position is fully explained and understood by parents and panel members
3. ensure that parents are treated in exactly the same way as representatives of the admission authority
4. ensure each case is properly understood and addressed on its individual merits
5. make sure notes of the proceedings are full and legible, and
6. provide plain English decision letters to parents making very clear why the appeal has not succeeded.

The Ombudsman, Dr Jane Martin, warned school admission authorities that they would face criticism when faults by a school admission appeal panel result in an unfair hearing, causing injustice to the parents and the child concerned.

Where an admission authority is found to have acted unfairly, it can be asked to hold a fresh appeal with a different panel, offer a place at the preferred school (but only if the published admission criteria were applied wrongly), or review its admission criteria and/or its appeal procedures to prevent recurrence.

The report contains six case studies where appeal hearings were not conducted fairly. These include:

• a panel accepting information from a council on home-to-school distance without checking it was accurate
• a panel awarding places to children who attend ‘feeder’ schools, but not to other children, and
• a panel that went back to the admission authority for clarification after the hearing, but without giving the parents an opportunity to challenge the additional information provided.

The Ombudsman said she welcomed the government’s recent publication of revised draft codes of practice on school admissions and appeals. The current system is “too often complex, confusing and unfair for parents”, she argued.

Dr Martin added: “Every year we receive a large number of complaints on school admission appeals. While each case is different and receives individual attention, we are alert to trends and themes both within schools and across authority areas. We want to draw attention to the repeated mistakes we see, and help admission authorities to avoid these pitfalls in future.”

But Dai Durbridge, education law expert at Browne Jacobson, warned that a bigger picture was being missed.

He said: "Traditionally admissions authorities were part of the local authority. However, academies can (and most do) act as their own admissions authority. For high performing academies particularly this presents a stressful and expensive problem with parents using the Admissions and Appeals Codes to put academies under enormous pressure during the appeal process.”

Durbridge said it was not uncommon for parents to ask upwards of 30 questions before an appeal, employ a professional advocate to put their case and for individual hearings to last in excess of two hours. For an over-subscribed academy facing 30-plus appeals, this results in a massive increase in cost – money that could be spent on education, he added.

“And the outcome if questions go unanswered or an appeal hearing is cut short? A finding of maladministration. I doubt this is what Mr Gove had in mind when promoting the freedom of academy status or what his predecessors envisaged when drafting the Codes."

A copy of the report can be downloaded from the LGO website.

Philip Hoult