Monitoring Education Appeals: Local Ombudsmen Lead the Way

Abstract

Five years ago, in this journal, I made so bold as to utter some instant thoughts¹ on a new appeals machinery–for parents dissatisfied with the school places allocated for their children.

To have published any kind of reaction in 1980, within three months of the Royal Assent to the Act and two years before the new “appeal committees” became operative,² was rash enough of me. I should have known better, though, than to venture (even in the form of surmise and innuendo) anything that might be held against me as predictions: as a leading trans-Atlantic authority on education law has warned us, predictions in this area “are about as reliable as reading tea-leaves.”³ I shall nevertheless refer back to some of my suppositions of 1980, if only to argue that my main anxiety has proved to be an under-estimate and to suggest that we all failed to notice what was to become a major (that is to say, litigated) issue.