Summary: We cannot investigate this complaint that the Council gave wrong advice to a parent and mishandled her application for a school place for her child. This is because the school the parent applied for is an academy.

How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information Mrs X provided with her complaint, and her comments when we spoke on the telephone. I also gave Mrs X an opportunity to comment on a draft version of this statement before I reached a final view in her case.

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What I found

6. In 2019 Mrs X applied for a school place for Y in the Reception year, to start in September 2020. At the time Mrs X was expecting to move house. Mrs X said the Council advised her to apply for a local school and to contact it again to amend her school preferences once she had moved.
7. Mrs X said she phoned the Council at the end of January 2020 after she had moved and informed it about her new address. She said the Council advised her there was nothing she could do about her preferences until after school places were allocated in April.
8. In April Y was offered a place at Mrs X’s original first preference school, based on her old address. Mrs X said she then contacted the Council again to change her application to the School, which was her new first preference following her move. However the Council said it had no record of Mrs X’s new address. By that time all the available places at the School had been filled.
9. Mrs X subsequently confirmed her new preference. Mrs X said she then called the Council again in May and was again told there was no record of her new address. Mrs X also said this was the first time the Council asked her to provide proof of her address.
10. Mrs X said she made further calls to the Council and was given the same response. But in June the Council confirmed it had received her proof of address and that Y’s name had been added to the School’s waiting list.
11. Mrs X complained to the Council. But it said it had no records of her contacts with it before May.
12. Mrs X also appealed to the school admission appeal panel about Y being refused a place at the School. However her appeal was turned down. Mrs X said the panel decided there was insufficient evidence of her earlier contacts with the Council to conclude there had been a fault in the admissions process.

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Analysis

13. However we cannot investigate Mrs X’s complaint.

14. First, the law prevents us from investigating where the person who complained has used a right of appeal to a statutory tribunal. This restriction is relevant in Mrs X’s case as school admission appeal panels are statutory tribunals.
15. Part of an appeal panel’s role is to consider if the admission arrangements were correctly applied to the child in question, and it must uphold an appeal if the arrangements were not correctly applied and this resulted in the child missing out on a place. Therefore I suggest that the appeal panel would have been able to address the issue in Mrs X’s complaint if it had seen reason to.
16. We can investigate complaints about fault in the way appeal panels deal with appeals. However this only applies where the school in question is maintained by the local authority.
17. But the School is an academy, which is not maintained by the Council, and the law precludes us from considering complaints about admissions to, and appeals for, academy schools. Therefore I consider this restriction on our jurisdiction means we cannot investigate any complaint Mrs X has about her application and appeal for the School.

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Final decision

18. We cannot investigate Mrs X’s complaint that the Council gave her wrong advice and mishandled her application for a school place which resulted in her daughter missing out on admission to her preferred school. This is because the school in question is an academy, and the law prevents us from pursuing complaints about academy schools.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman