Ruling over exclusion is quashed

A14-year-old boy was permanently excluded from one of Wales’ top secondary schools after shouting “sl*t” across a playground at a woman teacher.

A judge in the High Court has now ruled that an appeal panel that upheld his expulsion failed to properly consider the incident and has quashed its decision.

The teenager, who was coming to the end of his first GCSE year at Olchfa School in Swansea, shouted the insult in May last year. He admitted it and apologised to her and said he had not realised how bad it was. He was initially suspended for five days but was later permanently excluded. The teacher took time off work, was on medication and considered her future in teaching.

The boy’s family took the matter to the High Court after both the Olchfa School governors and the Independent Appeal Panel of Swansea Council upheld the head’s decision to permanently exclude their son.

His Honour Judge Jarman QC accepted the boy’s behaviour “involved an offensive term which was extremely disrespectful which caused significant emotional distress to the teacher” but said the independent panel was wrong not to make its own assessment of the seriousness of the behaviour and his apology.

Judge Jarman referred to Welsh Government guidance on exclusions which states they “will usually be the final step in a process for dealing with disciplinary offences following a wide range of other strategies, which have been tried without success”.

The judge said the panel’s remit was not to re-examine the case but to decide if the incident was a serious breach of the school’s policy and whether allowing the boy to remain in school would harm the education or welfare of pupils or others in the school – which it had not done.

He said that had the panel made its own assessment, then it was not highly likely they would have upheld the exclusion. He added that the teenager’s future career prospects could be affected by having a permanent school exclusion on his record and quashed its decision.

Judge Jarman added: “The claimant now attends another school in Swansea and does not want to be reinstated at Olchfa. Nevertheless, he does not want the stigma of permanent exclusion to affect his future and wants the panel’s decision quashed.”

He added that there is “now no challenge” to the facts around the boy’s exclusion from the 1,700-pupil school, which has the highest possible Estyn ranking and is the most over subscribed secondary in Swansea.

Responding to the findings, the child’s father said his son had been affected by the matter but was now thriving at another school. He repeated his son’s apologies, but said the response from the school had been extreme.

“When this first happened we were shocked. My son was mortified and apologised. He regrets what he did. But we were also shocked with the way it was handled by the school,” he said.

The boy’s parents have written to Olchfa asking for an apology.

A spokesperson for Swansea council said: “The panel is completely independent of the school and the council and the panel took its own decision to uphold the permanent exclusion. It is important to note that the judge made it clear his ruling only relates to the panel’s decision.

“The judge gave no ruling on the school’s decision to permanently exclude the pupil. An offer to convene a new panel to re-consider the decision has been made.”