Lexis PSL Local Government

"Lexis PSL Local Government" has now been published on line. The text on Education Law and the text on Highways Law were both written in 2009 by Nicholas Hancox.

School Admission Appeals 2009

Nicholas Hancox addressed members of the Education Law Association on 5 March about the operation of the new School Admission Appeals Code . He said:

Each appeal panel needs three or five trained members. The panel is entitled to examine the correctness of the admission authority's procedure and the lawfulness of its oversubscription criteria. The panel uses the familiar two stage process, but now there seem potentially to be two parts in each stage:

1A Decide whether or not the admission authority has 'obeyed the rules'. If not, was it the breach of the rules that prevented this child from being admitted?

1B Decide whether or not the admission of one more child (the appellant's child) to this school in this Year would or would not prejudice the provision of efficient education or the efficient use of resources. (If no prejudice is shown (and if there is only one appellant) the appellant's child must be admitted.)

2A If the rules have been broken, then adversely-affected children must be admitted, unless there are too many of them. If there are several children affected, the panel must decide which to admit and which to reject.

2B If 'prejudice' would arise, and the 'rules' are intact, then the panel moves on to the traditional second stage, which is to balance the applicant's grounds for seeking admission against the school's grounds for upholding its refusal. And again, if there is more than one appellant/child in the second stage, the panel must decide which to admit and which to reject.