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Decision Report 201507895

  • Case ref:
    201507895
  • Date:
    September 2016
  • Body:
    Aberdeenshire Council
  • Sector:
    Local Government
  • Outcome:
    Upheld, recommendations
  • Subject:
    secondary school

Summary

Mr C complained on behalf of his daughter (Miss A) about the transfer of school work when she moved between two schools.

We found that while the first school had updated Miss A's exam results promptly after she withdrew from the school, they did not properly deal with requests from Miss A and staff from the second school for evidence of those marks in the form of coursework.

We also found that the council had not identified this poor communication in their complaint investigation. We noted that they appeared to have contacted only the first school during their investigation and not the second school. We found this to be unreasonable. We therefore upheld Mr C's complaints and made two recommendations.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

  • share the outcome of this complaint with relevant staff; and
  • apologise to Mr C for the failure to conduct an effective investigation into his concerns and to his daughter for the distress caused to her by the inadequate communication between the schools.

Updated: March 13, 2018