Admission Appeals:
Review by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator
The Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) was asked by the Department for Children, Schools and Families to conduct an exercise to establish whether, in addition to the reviews conducted by the AJTC, the OSA should make routine checks on the conduct of admission appeals processes. We had two objectives in mind.
- To pilot some techniques for checking whether the processes administered by local authorities, dioceses and individual schools comply with the Appeals Code and are efficient and effective.
- To establish whether there is any evidence for the need for regular checks.
Thirteen local authorities allowed us access to the staff, panel members and parents involved in the appeals process in their areas. These areas provided a good coverage of types and sizes of local authorities – counties, metropolitan district and unitary authorities – as well as city, urban and rural areas. Altogether the areas included around 1800 community schools and 630 aided and foundation schools. Some authorities had many foundation and aided schools and some had few. In 2005-2006 (the latest year in which national statistics are available) there were 15,000 appeals heard in these areas, 36% of which were successful.
The ten school adjudicators conducted a series of interviews with the appeals panel organisers from the local authorities, together with those from six dioceses and thirty two foundation and aided schools. Panel members, presenting officers and clerks were asked to complete questionnaires and some were interviewed either as individuals or in small groups. The adjudicators also attended and observed the conduct of some appeal hearings. Parents were asked to complete a short questionnaire after the appeal hearing, but before the results were known and a further questionnaire was sent to Head teachers most affected by the appeals. Towards the end of the exercise we had a useful meeting with two senior investigating officers from the Local Government Ombudsman to get their view on the appeals process from the perspective of dealing with complaints.
The Chief Adjudicator, Dr Philip Hunter, will report to the Secretary of State shortly with his findings and recommendations.