An important Welsh school exclusion legal case this year has provided guidance on the approach the Independent Appeal Panel (IAP) should take. In the case of Young Adolescent (YA) v IAP Swansea (2022), the claimant called out an offensive word to a female teacher while in the schoolyard. YA admitted the incident and was very apologetic. He had a hitherto unblemished school record. However, the headteacher permanently excluded the YA. The governing body upheld the exclusion. The claimant appealed to the IAP, but the IAP duly upheld the exclusion.
YA judicially reviewed the IAP. The key issue was that it was not sufficient for the panel to determine that it was a matter for the school to judge which behaviours were serious enough to justify permanent exclusion. Nor was it for the IAP to simply accept that the headteacher stated that he had complied with the law and guidance.
The court found that the panel should have grappled with the substance of the issues itself, in accordance with Welsh government guidance (paragraph 1.1.1). The panel had to determine whether there was a serious breach of the school’s policy and whether allowing YA to remain in school would seriously harm the education or welfare of the pupils or others in the school. The panel was entitled to give weight to the headteacher’s decision. However, what it could not do was fail to carry out its own duty to have regard to the guidance.
The court said the panel found that the headteacher was aware of the school behaviour policy. However, in its deliberations, it did not itself grapple with the issues of how the claimant’s swift admission and apology had an impact on the consideration of the seriousness of his behaviour. It should have done so, especially given the headteacher’s inappropriate approach to the apology and failure to deal with the claimant’s admission.
The claimant went on to attend another school and was doing well. He had no wish to be reinstated. On this basis, the IAP barrister argued that the case was “academic”, and that no real harm or prejudice had been done to the claimant. However, the judge accepted that permanent exclusion stigmatises pupils and, in this case, was likely to have an adverse impact on his future career prospects.
It is, of course, a concern that a local authority IAP was not following guidance correctly. Presumably, this might have been the case for a number of years until this case was taken to court. The case illustrates that IAPs should not merely rubber-stamp a school’s exclusion decision - it should fully scrutinise the decision-making process and reach its own conclusion. Headteachers and schools, in turn, must make sure their exclusion procedures and decision making are compliant with guidance and that they are up to date with exclusion case law.
Michael Imperato is a director at Watkins and Gunn in Cardiff
