If so we may be able to help…
There are two ways to challenge admission to
Secondary School:
- The School Admissions
Appeal Tribunal
- The Exceptional
Circumstances Body
1. The School Admissions Appeal Tribunal
An appeal can be made
to this body to challenge a Board of Governor’s decision not to admit a child
to their school. The Tribunal’s powers are governed under article 15(5) of the
Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 and must follow a strict statutory
test.
The Tribunal must ask
themselves:
- Were the school’s admission criteria applied, or applied correctly; and
- If they had been correctly applied would the child have been granted entry into the school
If the Tribunal hold that the criteria were not
applied/correctly, and that if they had been applied correctly the child would
have been granted entry into the school, the school must make a place for that
child in the school. However, if the Tribunal find that the criteria, if
applied correctly, would have led to the child being refused from the school,
the appeal shall be dismissed.
The Tribunal reviews
the situation as it was before the school when it purported to apply its
criteria, it cannot substitute its own decision for the decision of the school.
The majority of cases we have dealt with involve
the Board of Governors failing to take relevant consideration of the special
circumstances application submitted by our clients. Special Circumstances is given a broad meaning and could include a
bereavement at the time of the transfer test, the child or a close family
member being unwell at the time of the test, or indeed a learning difficulty
later being diagnosed, which would have impacted upon the child at the time of
the test.
There is a tight deadline for submission of the
appeal, and the date will be detailed in the letter of offer. This will also
provide details of to whom you should submit the appeal.
2. The Exceptional Circumstances Body
This body’s powers are governed by the School
Admissions (Exceptional Circumstances) Regulations (NI) 2010, and they consider
application by parents that their child must attend a particular school. To make this decision they adopt a three-stage
test:
- Are the circumstances claimed exceptional?
- Are the circumstances claimed personal to the child? and
- Do the circumstances claimed required the child’s admission to the school, and only that school?
The body cannot consider circumstances which relate
wholly or mainly to the kind of education provided at that school e.g. grammar
versus comprehensive, circumstances related to a child’s academic ability, or
circumstances related to the availability of transport to that school.
The legislation gives examples of an exceptional
circumstances, namely where in the opinion of a medical practitioner the child
has been subjected to sexual abuse or where the child is looked after by an
authority.
There is no deadline for making an application,
save that the child has been recently turned down from the specified secondary
school.
If you wish to appeal a School’s decision to refuse
entry to your child you should:
- Be aware of the deadline to submit their appeal
- Complete the form as fully as possible, directing their reasons for appeal to the statutory tests outlined above
- Append all the necessary supporting documentation
Worthingtons Solicitors have successfully dealt with a number of School Admissions Appeals, and Exceptional Circumstances Body applications. We can provide assistance and representation from the initial stage of submitting the Appeal, to attending the Appeal Hearing.
