LGO tells primary school to review its admissions arrangements appeal procedure

The Local Government Ombudsman has criticised a London faith school for failing to make its admissions procedure compliant with statutory codes of practice.

Responding to a complaint made by the parents of an unsuccessful applicant, the Ombudsman, Dr Jane Martin, found that St Paul’s Church of England Primary School in Mill Hill failed to treat an application fairly, provided incorrect information, unreasonably delayed its response ultimately “misunderstood its own responsibilities”.

The child's parents complained to the Ombudsman about the way that the school dealt with both the initial application and the subsequent appeal.

The principal faults found by the Ombudsman were that:

• the admission criteria were applied unfairly, in that an applicant’s commitment to religious faith was assessed in a way that could contravene the Disability Discrimination Act, and this was not considered by the appeal panel
• the school did not write to the parents to inform them of the refusal of a place, or to give its reasons for refusal, or to provide information about the appeal process
• the governors wrongly refused to allow the appeal, and refused to tell the parents what position their daughter was on the waiting list
• the governors delayed holding the appeal hearing until well after the statutory time limit, and gave unacceptable grounds for doing so (they insisted on meeting with the parents first, which introduced delay and should not have been necessary), and
• the appeal panel failed to consider complaints about the admission process and refused to consider arguments legitimately raised by the parents; it misunderstood its role and remit, interpreting them too narrowly as verifying the admission criteria.

However, the Ombudsman did commend the School’s decision to omit from its admission criteria in future the requirement for applicant parents to demonstrate commitment through church-related activities.

Dr Martin said : “This case highlights a catalogue of errors which were all avoidable, if only basic systems had been in place. The school did not treat the applicants fairly in that it did not take the disability of a family member into account. This failure was then compounded by incorrect information, unreasonable delay, poor communication and then finally, a mismanaged appeals process”.

On finding maladministration causing injustice, the Ombudsman recommended that the School’s governing body:

• apologises to the parents for the inconvenience and stress it caused them
• immediately reviews its admission arrangements, in particular its letter informing applicants of the refusal of admittance
• reviews and revises its appeal arrangements to comply with the School Admission Appeals Code, and
• reviews the protocols and training for its admissions committee.

A copy of the full report is available from: http://www.lgo.org.uk/news/2011/may/faith-school-mismanaged-admissions-appeals-arrangements/