Wolverhampton Girls’ High School (07B02334)

School admissions                     Maladministration causing injustice

20 February 2008

The complaint

Mrs G applied for a place for her daughter at the girls’ Grammar School; The School was a foundation school where the governors were the admissions authority. It was a selective school and places were allocated to the girls who scored highest in the school’s entrance examination.

When Mrs G was advised that her daughter had not reached the required level, and so was not allocated a place, she lodged an appeal. Because Mrs G felt there were faults in the way her appeal was considered, she complained to the Ombudsman. 

The Ombudsman’s investigation

The Ombudsman’s investigation uncovered wide-ranging and serious shortcomings in the appeal process. These included:

• no written case was presented by the admissions authority to the appellants and the members of the appeal panel to demonstrate what prejudice to efficient education or efficient use of resources would be caused by the additional admission;
• the head and the chair of the admissions committee had been alone with the members of the appeal panel, contrary to the Government’s School Admission Appeals Code of Practice;
• places that had become available after the initial allocation of places were considered at appeal, rather than being allocated from the waiting list;
• inadequate records were kept of the reasons for the appeal panel’s decisions;
• the clerk to the appeal panel was inappropriately involved in preparing evidence for the panel; and
• information provided for parents was misleading.

The Ombudsman’s view

The Ombudsman concluded that the faults in the process were so severe that he considered they called into question the decisions the appeal panel had reached on Mrs G’s appeal. He also said that Mrs G could not be certain that, if proper procedures had been followed, her daughter would have been awarded a place. The Ombudsman also noted that Mrs G’s sense of unfairness was compounded because there had been an error in the appeal panel’s decision letter giving the wrong examination result for her daughter. The Ombudsman said:

“There were a number of fundamental flaws in how the appeal process was conducted for appeals for admission… They indicate a lack of understanding of the basic tenets of the appeal process by the admissions authority, the clerk and the appeal panel.”

The outcome

The Ombudsman said that on balance he considered that Mrs G’s daughter would have obtained a place at the School had the many failings he had identified not deprived her of a fair hearing. For this reason he called upon the Governors to offer her a place. The Governors agreed, and Mrs G accepted this offer.

In welcoming the Governors’ actions during the investigation to accept many of his findings, the Ombudsman recommended that the other areas of fault he had identified should also be reviewed.  

Date Updated: 16/12/08