Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Ms A’s complaint that the school admission appeal panel was at fault in refusing her appeal for a school place for her daughter. This is because it is unlikely we would find significant fault on the Council’s part.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I will refer to as Ms A, complains that the school admission appeal panel was at fault in refusing her appeal for a school place for her daughter.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We cannot question whether an independent school admissions appeals panel’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider if there was fault in the way the decision was reached. If we find fault, which calls into question the panel’s decision, we may ask for a new appeal hearing. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I have considered what Ms A has said in support of her complaint and the appeal documents provided by the Council. I have also considered Ms A’s response to my draft decision.

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What I found

4. Ms A applied for a school place for her daughter for admission to the Reception year group in September 2019. She expressed a preference for three schools. The Council received more applications for each of the three schools than it had places available. It applied its oversubscription policy and refused Ms A’s applications.
5. Ms A appealed against the Council’s decision to refuse her application for a place at her second-choice school. She made a written submission in support of her appeal and attended the appeal hearing to make her case in person. The school admission appeal panel refused Ms A’s appeal. Ms A complains that the panel was at fault, and that its decision was flawed.
6. Independent school admission appeal panels must follow the law when considering an appeal. The law says the size of an infant class must not be more than 30 pupils per teacher. There are only limited circumstances in which more than 30 children can be admitted. There are special rules governing appeals for Reception and Years 1 and 2. Appeals under these rules are known as “infant class size appeals”. The rules say the panel must consider whether:
    

• admitting another child would breach the class size limit;
• the admission arrangements comply with the law:
• the admission arrangements were properly applied to the case:
• the decision to refuse a place was one which a reasonable authority would have made in the circumstances.

7. What is ‘unreasonable’ is a high test. The panel needs to be sure that to refuse a place was “perverse” or “outrageous”. For that reason panels rarely find an admission authority’s decision to be unreasonable.
8. The Ombudsman does not question the merits of decisions properly taken. The panel is entitled to come to its own judgment about the evidence it hears.
9. Ms A complains about the conduct of one of the three members of the appeal panel. She says this member expressed her personal opinion on matters throughout the hearing, rather than restricting herself to questioning the cases. This led Ms A to conclude that this panel member made her decision based on her opinions, rather than the evidence.
10. Having considered the clerk’s contemporaneous notes of the appeal hearing, I can identify nothing to suggest that the panel was at fault. Ms A was able to make her case and the panel was able to question it. There is nothing to suggest that irrelevant points were made or considered, or that the matter was not properly explored. Ms A argues that this is because the clerk failed to record the inappropriate comments by one of the panel members. I attach no significance to this. Clerks’ notes of appeal hearings are not required to be verbatim records. In this case, they show that the panel considered the matters it was required to consider.
11. The weight panel members give to the evidence before them is a matter for their judgement, not for the Ombudsman. The notes and decision letter show that the panel members considered the evidence and unanimously took the view that none of the grounds on which they could uphold the appeal applied. That was their decision to make.
12. In the absence of evidence of fault in the way the panel made its decision, the Ombudsman cannot intervene to criticise the decision or to substitute an alternative view.
13. Ms A complains that the appeal panel members were trained by the Council. She argues that the panel cannot therefore be regarded as independent. However, the statutory guidance governing school admission appeals specifies that councils are responsible for training their panel members. The Council is not therefore at fault in doing so.
14. Mrs A further complains that the Council delayed sending her the letter setting out why her appeal was refused. She argues that this impacted on her ability to decide whether to take any further action. It is clear however that Ms A was aware of her right to come to the Ombudsman, as she did so before she received the refusal letter. I do not find therefore that any delay in issuing the letter disadvantaged Ms A significantly

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Final decision

15. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because it is unlikely we would find significant fault on the Council’s part.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman