The High Court has quashed an appeals committee’s recommendation to enrol a child in St. Marnock’s National School’s Speech and Language Class, and the resulting direction to the school, after finding the recommendation irrational and unfair to other eligible applicants. The matter was remitted for a fresh hearing before a newly constituted committee.
The judicial review concerned the refusal of a place to E.C. for the academic year beginning in September 2017. The school had three available places and 17 eligible applicants. E.C.’s application was ranked fifth by the school’s Admissions Advisory Committee. After the school refused him a place and an internal appeal failed, his mother appealed under section 29 of the Education Act 1998.
The section 29 Appeals Committee upheld the complaint. It found that the school’s published enrolment policy and referral leaflet did not set out criteria for prioritising eligible children when applications exceeded places. The committee nevertheless recommended that E.C. be enrolled because he met the eligibility criteria. The Secretary General’s representative then directed the school to arrange his enrolment.
The school sought judicial review, arguing that the committee acted unfairly and irrationally, and that the direction was unlawful. The court rejected the challenge to the committee’s finding that the school lacked published oversubscription criteria. It also rejected the school’s fair-procedures complaint, concluding that it knew or ought to have known it would need to show that the successful applicants were selected under the published policy.
However, Justice Coffey held that once the committee found the policy inoperable for selecting among eligible applicants, it was unreasonable to use that same policy to recommend a place for E.C. on eligibility alone. Thirteen other unsuccessful pupils were equally eligible, and the recommendation did not make clear whether E.C.’s place would displace any of the three successful applicants or create an additional place. The court also noted that there was no evidence the committee had considered the educational interests of other pupils or resource implications if an extra place were created.
The judgment said the appropriate remedy was for the committee to recommend that the school adopt effective published criteria and rerun the selection process before the academic year began. The court granted the requested orders quashing the committee’s determination and the enrolment direction, and remitted the matter to the Secretary General for a new section 29 hearing. It did not itself decide which applicant should receive a place.