Remote technology in school admission and exclusion appeal hearings: consultation

Background

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 we 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. Subsequently, 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.