The High Court has refused a parent’s judicial review challenge to a decision refusing her child a place in junior infants for the 2022/23 school year, finding that the school appeals committee had a proper evidential basis and gave adequate reasons. The court left the final costs issue and orders for a later date.
The school’s oversubscription policy gave priority first to siblings of pupils who had attended in the previous school year, then to applicants living within the town’s Roman Catholic parish. Within each category, places were allocated by age, oldest first. The parent’s child was placed third on the waiting list after being refused a place in February 2022.
The parent asked the school board for a parish boundary map and a breakdown of the 28 successful applicants by admission criterion. The board did not provide the requested information. The parent appealed the refusal under section 29 of the Education Act 1998. The appeals committee rejected that appeal in a written decision dated 10 May 2022.
In the judicial review, the parent argued that the committee lacked an adequate evidential basis, failed to follow fair procedures, and should have treated the policy as ineffective because it did not include a parish map. The court found that her appeal had challenged the sibling priority rule and the policy’s approach to applicants within the parish, but had not alleged that children admitted under the residence criterion were ineligible. The committee was required to determine the stated grounds of appeal and was not obliged to investigate every successful applicant’s eligibility without a specific basis for doing so.
The judge said it was unsatisfactory that the board had not answered the parent’s requests and that the committee had not shared the board’s breakdown of places. The committee should have sought the board’s consent to disclose that non-contentious information, the court said. But the breakdown was created after the refusal decision, so it was not material the committee could rely on under section 29E(1). The court found that withholding it had not impaired the parent’s ability to make her appeal.
The judge also found that the missing map did not make the policy inoperative for the purposes of the section 29 appeal: the parent knew enough about the boundary to apply under the residence criterion, and her child had received the priority due under the policy.
The court refused all relief. It added that, even if the parent had established a basis for relief, a remittal would be futile: the unchallenged evidence of the board chair was that the ten places remaining after the sibling allocations went to parish residents in age order. The judge indicated that the board’s failure to provide information, and the committee’s failure to seek consent to share its breakdown, might justify a different approach to costs. The matter was listed for a later date to finalise costs and make final orders.