Local Government Ombudsman
(often known as the Education Ombudsman)
- You have no chance of winning a complaint to the ombudsman simply because you disagree with an appeal panel decision. You have to show that the panel has not followed correct procedures in such a way that a wrong decision may have been taken.
School appeals depend on a generally excellent group of unpaid but trained volunteers, with only one member on a panel of three required to have an educational background. Without them, the appeal system could not function and most appeals are conducted courteously and fairly. However, some go badly wrong and the local government ombudsman exists to consider complaints about process. Further details at ombudsman.
- I have recently secured successes through the Ombudsman over two primary school appeals. One of the families has now been awarded a place in the Reception year at their chosen school. This brings my recent total to 26 successes out of 29 (however, I always advise on the chances of success, so that I do not take on cases that I consider unwinnable).
- Where grammar schools are full or nearly full, appeal cases are often fraught with difficulties for the appeal panel as the regulations are unclear, and often lead to successful complaints to the ombudsman.
- The most likely outcome of a successful admissions complaint to the ombudsman is a fresh appeal under a different panel, unless the fault is such that the complainant would have been entitled to a place if the panel had acted properly.
- In education matters, the Local Government Ombudsman primarily deals with school issues which relate to admissions, exclusions, and Special Education Needs. He does not get involved with other “issues of internal school management”. I am happy to advise if there is a case to be made.
- In my experience, complaints generally take between two and six months to be resolved, but a recent one went on for eight months.
- the Ombudsman website is at LGO
- The Ombudsman published two reports on complaints following Kent School Appeals in February 2009. Both can be found here. The first of these, following a complaint by me, was about an infant admission appeal to Deal Parochial Primary School. As a result, the child was awarded a place at the school. This case highlights a worrying feature of a number of church school admission policies (both primary and secondary) across Kent. The dioceses of both Canterbury and Rochester are required to be consulted on these, but the procedure is clearly faulty. The school adjudicator examined a number of these in the summer and as a result, there are some changes in the pipeline. The second Report is on Fulston Manor School. Interestingly, although there were considerable faults identified in the appeal process, the Report agrees that the decision not to uphold the appeal was the correct one! Fulston Manor School has taken steps to remove the faults in its procedures. There have been no subsequent problems with appeals at the school.
- The Ombudsman archive pages referred to above, reveal that three of my complaints have produced published Reports (where the complaint may be of national interest), out of a total of 16 on school admissions in the past three years. Indeed as one Report was for seven of my clients, these amounted to a majority of all complaints! A total of five out of the fifteen Reports relate to Kent schools (all Foundation or Voluntary Aided Schools).
- For 2009 entry, I won complaints to the Ombudsman on behalf of seven families at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School, Rochester. Medway Council admitted major faults in the process, coupled with further faults by the Independent Appeal Panel and has now offered places at the school to all those boys who had passed the Medway Test, but were turned down on appeal. This is the third time in six years I have secured places at this school through complaints to the ombudsman on behalf of groups of parents, representing a total of 27 families over this time, along with many others who were successful at appeal in the first place!
- Because there was a local settlement, not all issues were considered by the Ombudsman, but he expressed considerable concern over the operation of the Medway oversubscription distance criteria for oversubscription. A number of parents were never given details of why their sons had been turned even after the Panel Chairman instructed the Council to provide these before individual appeals. The Council was criticised for not providing the correct paperwork for the appeal and for introducing new evidence (actually just assertions) at the appeal, without notice. The Council neither provided details of the school capacity, not any evidence there would be prejudice if additional pupils were admitted. The council presenting officer did not know that secondary school rolls were falling in Medway. The previous headteacher (now retired) stated at his Open Evening that in the past all parents whose sons had passed the Medway Test and persevered in their applications to the school had eventally been offered places.
For entry in September 2009, the school rstrongly resisted any additional admissions and just three appeals were successful. This time, although the Ombudsman recognised faults in the process he did not uphold any complaints.
- Another of my successful ombudsman complaints was at The Thomas Aveling School in Medway, the key issue once again being faulty distance plotting. I have won several appeals on these grounds in previous years.
- The Ombudsman has published Reports on complaints about Admission Appeals for The Judd School and Skinners School (dated October 31st 2007). Details are here.
- The Ombudsman published a Report on a number of successful complaints at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Faversham, where I secured places for eight children (22 May 2007). Following resolution of the complaints, each family appealed a second time for a place at the school with my support and was successful. The Foundation school had used the KCC Appeals Service and the summary sentence of the Report reads 'Governors cannot take it for granted, without proper enquiry, that the appeals service which they commission will be fit for purpose'. This is a powerful indictment of the process, and the Ombudsman found sixteen different examples of maladministration in the operation of the appeals, including wholly inappropriate questioning, an inadequate clerking service, information provided to the Panel but not to parents, incorrect procedural guidance issued by KCC to parents, pressure put on parents to keep statements and hearings unneccesarily short, refusal to accept parental evidence, improper consideration of headteacher appeal evidence, etc, etc. The previous year another Report on one of my cases was published, this time at St John’s RC Comprehensive school in Gravesend. Copies of these reports are available from the Ombudsman's Office. A summary of the most recent reports can be found here.
- Please note that if your child has now secured three Level Fives at SAT Level 2, this is not grounds to complain to the ombudsman for a grammar school appeal as the Panel did not know the results at the time. There have to be additional grounds of maladministration to win a fresh appeal.
- The Local Government Ombudsman publishes an annual letter to Local Authorities, reporting on complaints made to him. The letter for Kent relating to 2008 admisssions and appeals can be found here. The relevant paragraphs read:
I decided 58 complaints about applications and appeals for admission to Community and Voluntary Controlled schools, where the Council is the admissions authority. One complaint was outside my jurisdiction. In 23 complaints, there was no, or insufficient, evidence of maladministration and, in 20 others, I used my discretion not to pursue an investigation. I agreed to settle 14 complaints. In a number of appeals, the written cases presented on the Council’s behalf contained mistakes and, in others, the Panels took account of irrelevant factors in reaching their conclusions. In eight cases, a place at a preferred school was offered to a pupil, by various means including a successful appeal. The Council offered a rehearing, with a completely different Appeal Panel and a different Clerk, in respect of the appeals of six other pupils. Nevertheless, the Council was reluctant to accept our recommendations that some appeals should be reheard, and more resistant to our suggestion that, in a very exceptional case where the Council and the Appeal Panel had been at fault, the Council should exercise its discretion to admit the pupil without requiring a further appeal. The Council has agreed to review a range of procedures and published material relating to applications and appeals for school places.
The average time taken by the Council to reply to our written enquiries about complaints was 38.1 days. This represents a significant deterioration, compared with the time taken last year (29.4 days) to respond to our enquiries. Delayed responses were not confined to any particular departments. I hope that the Council will make every effort to achieve the target (28 days) which we set for responding to our first written enquiries.
The Council’s responses to our enquiries as well as being slow do not always provide full answers to the questions raised. This can lead to the need to make further enquiries. While some responses have been thin, others have contained an excess of detail. On occasion the Council is reluctant to offer to settle complaints. Some of the Council’s responses on admission appeal cases have been incomplete, with pages missing from Clerks’ manuscript notes of Admissions Appeal Panels. Our concern about the quality of responses applies not only to complaints about appeals where the Council is the admissions authority for the school in question, but also where the Council provides an appellate and clerking service on behalf of the Governors of Voluntary Aided and Foundation schools who are their own admissions authorities.
For Medway, the full letter can be found here. The relevant sections read:
I decided 22 complaints about educational issues. I found no maladministration on four school admissions complaints and I used my discretion not to pursue investigations into two others as well as two complaints about general educational issues.
I agreed to settle 13 education complaints. Ten of these related to failures in the arrangements for school admissions. The complaints were settled either by school places being offered to the children or by re-hearings for the parents. One of my Investigators subsequently visited the Council to discuss its school admissions arrangements and a number of changes have now been made which should help to avoid similar problems from occurring in future years.
The average time taken by the Council to reply to our written enquiries was 40.2 days, which is significantly higher than the time target we set and continues the upward trend of the past few years. It also compares unfavourably with the performance of other unitary authorities, only 9% of which have an average response time of 36 days or longer. As in previous years there were some very significant delays on a small number of complaints.
Of the 34 complaints on which we made enquiries, only seven of the responses were within the target time.
One of my Investigators visited the Council in August 2008 to discuss the Council’s procedures for complaint handling.The Council has subsequently confirmed that on-line reporting and case management control systems have been refined to give greater focus to response times and to identify delays at an earlier point within the process. It does not appear that this has yet resulted in any significant improvement. The high level of local settlements (46.4% of those within my jurisdiction) suggests that the Council’s own procedures for dealing with complaints may not be as robust as they could be, and that it may be reluctant to accept fault or not be prepared to offer an appropriate remedy until pressed to do so.