Summary: The Ombudsman cannot investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the way a school reacted to an incident involving her child and the resulting effects of that action. We cannot investigate the internal organisation, management of and discipline in a school.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mrs X, says a school unfairly treated her child, B, which resulted in B having to leave the school. And the school caused a delay in getting a place at another school.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We cannot investigate complaints about what happens in schools. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5, paragraph 5(b), as amended)
3. The Courts have said that we cannot investigate a complaint about any action by a council, concerning a matter which is itself out of our jurisdiction. (R (on the application of M) v Commissioner for Local Administration [2006] EHWCC 2847 (Admin))
4. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word 'fault' to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:
• it is unlikely we would find Council fault, or
• the Council fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• it would be reasonable for the person to ask for a council review or appeal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information Mrs X provided with her complaint and the Council’s replies which it provided. I considered Mrs X’s comments on a draft version of this decision.

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What I found

6. Mrs X has a child, B, who is 13 years old. In the Autumn of 2018, B became involved in an incident at School Y. As a result, School Y fixed term excluded B for 10 days. Mrs X disagrees with School Y’s handling of the whole incident and the fixed term exclusion.
7. Mrs X says she lost confidence in School Y being able to adequately safeguard B and withdrew B from School Y. She decided to home educate B while she looked for an alternative school.
8. Mrs X applied to School D and E in early 2019. They are not in this Council’s area. She says the schools had places but refused to give B a place because of inaccurate information School Y gave them. She says School Y told the schools B had been permanently excluded, or was about to be. This is not the case.
9. Mrs X appealed School D’s refusal of a place. She was successful. B started at School D in early March.

Analysis

10. We cannot investigate School Y’s handling of the incident or its decision to impose a fixed term exclusion.
11. We cannot investigate the information School Y gave to Schools D and E.
12. The law requires school admissions authorities to have an appeals system for parents to use when they are refused a school place. Mrs X used this process and was successful. We would not investigate a school’s refusal to offer a place which an appeal overturns. Parliament created the appeal process as the redress procedure for school application refusals.

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Final decision

13. The Ombudsman should not and cannot investigate this complaint. This is because we cannot investigate how a school dealt with a behaviour issue.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman