King David Primary School, Liverpool (07C03519)

School admissions                      Maladministration causing injustice

24 January 2008

The complaint

Mr H was refused a place for his daughter at the School. He complained that the School’s admission criteria did not comply with the School Admissions Code of Practice; and that there were serious flaws in the way the appeal panel heard his appeal against the refusal of a place.

What happened

Mr H applied under ‘Category 3’ of the School’s admission procedure. In this category, 21 children were allocated places out of 54 applicants, but his daughter was not one of them. The School could not describe fully how it selected the 21 successful children.

Neither the School, nor the local education authority (LEA) on the School’s behalf, provided Mr H with specific reasons why his daughter was refused a place. He was therefore unable to prepare for his appeal properly because he did not know until the hearing itself that other children in ‘Category 3’ had been given priority over his daughter.

The Ombudsman’s view

The Ombudsman found that the School’s admission and appeal arrangements were flawed, and in particular that the admission criteria for ‘Category 3’ applicants were not “objective, clear and fair” as required by the Code. The criteria did not reflect accurately how the decisions were made in practice.

The Ombudsman also found faults in the way the appeal had been heard. She said that the appeal panel:

• was not told how the admission criteria were applied to Mr H’s application;
• was given inadequate information about the issue of class size prejudice; and
• failed to consider two key issues properly – whether the admission criteria had been applied correctly, and whether the decision to refuse the child on grounds of class size prejudice was a decision that a reasonable authority would make in the circumstances of the case. 

The Ombudsman concluded that had the appeal panel considered this appeal properly, it would have had no alternative but to decide the school had not made a clear case for the decisions it had made about which children in ‘Category 3’ should be admitted.

Outcome

The Ombudsman recommended that the School should:

• urgently review its admission criteria and the way they are applied in practice to ensure that they are clear, fair and objective;
• work with the LEA to agree how it will ensure that, from 2008, applicants are given sufficient detail about the reasons for refusal;
• provide sufficient information necessary to allow the appeal panel to undertake its duties properly;
• ensure appeal panel members are adequately trained to carry out their duties properly and to understand what information they need; and
• offer a place to the child, except if Mr H decides it would not be in his daughter’s best interest to accept a place now, the School should instead pay him £250 for his time and trouble in making his complaint.

Date Updated: 13/01/09