The complaint

The parents of a youth who did not receive any funds to support his studies at a college for higher education in Scotland alleged that this amounted to unfair discrimination by the headmaster of the school where their son was enrolled.

They raised the matter with the Ombudsman and alleged that the funds had instead been shared between three fellow students from their son’s school, who attended the same course with him.

Facts of the case

Following contacts between the school which the complainants’ son used to attend and a Scottish college for further education, it was agreed that representatives of the college would visit Malta to conduct interviews with students who were interested in following a course of studies at the college leading to a degree in graphic design.

All the students who were interested, including the complainants’ son, were informed of the dates of this visit but the youth failed to turn up for the interview.

Following this, the complainants made private arrangements for their son to be interviewed in Scotland. This interview had a positive outcome, and the youth was accepted for the course. A few weeks later, he left for Scotland on the same flight as the three students who had been successful in their interview in Malta.

Up until then, it had been made clear that students were expected to meet their own tuition costs and living expenses in Scotland. However, an application by the school for funds under the EU Leonardo Community Vocational Training Action Programme was successful, and the school was allocated funds for the three students listed in its application who were following the course in Scotland and for an exchange programme for two of its teachers.

As a result of this initiative, each of the three students received a sum of €4,900 to support his studies. Upon being made aware of this allocation, the complainants contacted the headmaster of the school and inquired why their son had been excluded from these funds.

Although the headmaster tried to divert unutilised funds under the staff exchange component of the Leonardo programme to support the studies of the complainants’ son in Scotland, this was not possible under the rules of the Leonardo programme.

Considerations and comments

In their letter to the Ombudsman, the complainants held that the school authorities could easily have contacted their son and informed him that the Scottish representatives were on the island to conduct interviews with Maltese applicants. In this way, his interview would have taken place in Malta instead of Scotland.

The complainants explained that although school attendance records showed that their son was a regular absentee from school, the school authorities were fully aware that this was due to the fact that he was studying on his own for his A level examinations at that time. In any event, they argued that the headmaster knew that their son had been accepted to follow the course, since when he left for Scotland with his fellow students the headmaster himself was at the airport to bid them farewell.

The complainants pointed out that representatives of the Scottish college had told them that they would themselves be getting in touch with their son’s school in Malta to inform them of the outcome of his interview. The headmaster should therefore not have excluded their son when he applied on behalf of the other students for EU funds under the Leonardo project.

For his part, the headmaster insisted that the complainants’ son regularly missed lessons and that all the interested students had been informed of the dates when representatives of the Scottish college were due to visit Malta. The headmaster admitted that he knew that the complainants intended to take their son for an interview in Scotland, although they never informed him of the outcome of this interview.

Neither did the college in Scotland ever inform him of the result, and he only came to know about it indirectly when he attended the graduation of teachers from his school at the college in Scotland and was informed that the complainants’ son was there.

The headmaster explained that when he submitted the application for EU funds he could only apply in respect of students about whom he had received official information regarding their acceptance at the college in Scotland.

He had even subsequently tried to allocate unspent EU funds to their son but this had not proved possible.

The headmaster maintained that the complainants had no valid grounds on which to blame the school authorities for the fact that their son had not been interviewed in Malta, because although he was informed of their impending visit he persisted in absenting himself from school. In the circumstances, the headmaster felt that he had fulfilled his responsibilities toward his students and there was nothing else that he could have done.

The Ombudsman found no evidence that the school authorities had ever received any official information from the Scottish college that the complainants’ son had been admitted to the same course as his three fellow students.

However, there were more than enough grounds to believe that the headmaster knew – or had reason to understand – that the youth was following the same course as the three other students.

According to the headmaster, since the school had no official information regarding the acceptance of the complainants’ son by the Scottish college, there was no reason why the youth should have been included with the other students in the school’s request for EU funds. He maintained that the school found itself in this position because the complainants had not bothered to inform the school management of the outcome of their son’s interview. The Ombudsman, however, regarded this line of reasoning by the school authorities as an example of the application of administrative procedures in a rigid manner.

In this connection the Ombudsman thought it was relevant to point out that at the time of the departure of the four students, EU funds were not yet available and all the students were expected to meet the full cost of their studies without any outside support. In fact it was only when the complainants came to know that the three students had received EU funds that they contacted the school authorities.

Regardless of whether, in terms of administrative procedures, the school authorities should or should not be faulted for excluding the complainants’ son from the application for EU funds, the Ombudsman felt that another issue deserved consideration. Since a head of school is required to act as a bonus paterfamilias, the headmaster would have acted in a more proper manner if he had included the complainants’ son with the three other students in the school’s application for EU funds.

If any doubts arose as to whether the complainants’ son had been accepted by the Scottish college, and whether he was following the course of studies abroad, the issue could easily have been solved by contacting the complainants before the application was submitted. This was a failure on the part of the school authorities, despite efforts at a later stage to divert unspent EU funds in favour of the complainants’ son.

Conclusion

Following his review of this case, the Ombudsman concluded that:

the complainants’ grievance that their son was not informed of the visit to Malta by representatives of the Scottish college was not justified; and

• the headmaster of the school may be administratively excused for not including complainants’ son in the application for EU funding although if he had acted as a bonus paterfamilias in respect of the youth, he would have adopted a fairer and more equitable approach.

The Ombudsman felt that a recommendation was not warranted in this case.