Complaints about schools admissions appeals to the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) have fallen by 50 per cent over the past four years, a report issued today finds.

The sharp reduction in the number of parents bringing their complaints to the LGO coincides with the increase in the amount of academies and free schools being set up – over which the LGO holds no jurisdiction.

In the last year (April 2013 to March 2014), the LGO has considered 747 complaints and enquiries about schools admissions appeals, compared to the 1,499 it received in 2010 to 2011. Over the same period, the number of academies and free schools has grown from 462 to 3,688.

The report highlights some key issues from upheld complaints, including children not being considered under the correct ‘excepted’ criteria, infant school admissions looked at under the wrong criteria, and poor clerking of appeals hearings and record keeping.

The key issues are shown through the stories of people who have complained, such as an Armed Forces family that was disadvantaged because the parent served abroad and a six-year-old girl who was without a school place for a term because the local authority did not offer the family a school. There is also a child that was denied a place at the faith school his sister attended, despite the school offering places to other non-Catholic children, and a child with dyslexia unable to sit her grammar school entry exam properly because the school failed to make proper provision.

Last year, the LGO upheld a quarter of all complaints about schools admissions it investigated in detail.

Dr Jane Martin, Local Government Ombudsman, said:

“In the vast majority of appeals, parents have no cause to complain to us, but in the stories in this report we have highlighted faults that could have been avoided. Parents have a statutory right to appeal for a place and they need to feel assured that those appeals are carried out fairly.

“By sharing the lessons learned from the complaints that we receive, we hope that admissions authorities make sure that their own arrangements are as effective as they can be and that fewer parents are distressed by the uncertainty that their appeal was not heard correctly.”

Article date: 02 September 2014