Use of remote technology in school admission and exclusion appeal hearings: Consultation Analysis

2. Introduction

2.1 Background to the consultation

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, education authorities and education appeal committees (hereafter “appeal committees") faced significant challenges in meeting the statutory requirements of the legislation that apply to school admission and exclusion appeal hearings. In response to their concerns that the school admission placing request and appeals process may face significant disruption the Scottish Government introduced The Education (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Regulations 2020^[1] in April 2020. The regulations provided education authorities and appeal committees with greater flexibility, to enable appeal hearings to continue to be heard in a timely way.

These arrangements were:

• giving flexibility for appeal hearings to take place either in person or by telephone or video conference, or where all parties agree wholly in writing; and
• amending the timescales and deadlines relating to appeals

The regulations were amended further in February 2021 and in December 2021 through The Education (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Regulations 2021^[2]and The Education (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Coronavirus) (Scotland) (No. 2) Regulations 2021^[3] respectively. As the pandemic eased, the regulations were amended to remove the extensions to the deadlines and timescales returning them to as they were prior to the pandemic. The ability to conduct appeal hearings remotely however has remained in place throughout this period. The current regulations will remain in place until such time changes are made following the outcome of this consultation process.

2.2 Format of the consultation

The consultation ran from 16 January 2024 to 12 March 2024. Views were invited on four questions in relation to whether to retain the option of holding appeal hearings remotely which also sought views on making in-person appeal hearings the default with remote hearings as an option if all parties agree. It also sought views on any improvements that could be made to the current system in regard to digital exclusion.

The questions are summarised as follows:

1. Do you agree with the proposal that the use of remote means for appeal hearings should remain?

2. Do you agree that video conferencing should be the default option and telephone conferencing, or wholly written means be used only where it is not possible to use video-conferencing?

3. Do you agree that remote means should only be used where all parties agree?

4. Are there any other improvements that should be made to how remote means is used in appeal hearings, for example, to mitigate the risk of digital exclusion?

2.3 Format of this consultation report

This consultation analysis report is in two parts: a quantitative analysis of the consultation responses in section 3.5, and a qualitative analysis in section 4 which sets out the main themes that were gathered from the consultation responses. Where necessary, comments are provided by the Scottish Government to give further clarity or explanation.

Please note that the discussion in section 4 does not include consideration of each individual comment made, rather the most relevant themes mentioned by multiple respondents.

2.4 Data protection and the consultation

To ensure compliance with data protection requirements, respondents were asked by the Scottish Government if their responses could be published online. The appropriate data redactions have been implemented dependent upon respondents’ answers to this question. Where respondents have given permission to publish their response without name, quotations have been provided with the appropriate identifying data redacted. To provide context to the response, we have provided the details of the general category to which the respondent has been identified as belonging.

To help illustrate further the key themes explored in the consultation responses some quotations have been included within the discussion below.

No quotations have been provided from respondents who provided an answer “do not publish response”. However, these responses formed part of our overall consideration and analysis of the consultation responses.