44 ANNUAL REPORT 2015 10-YEAR-OLD BOY EXCLUDED AFTER ATTACK For a couple of months, a municipal special needs school had had difficulties dealing with a 10-year-old boy. He had behaved aggressively on several occasions, and he had a completely different perception from his classmates and teachers of what had been going on after he had acted under emotional stress. One day, the boy attacked one of his teachers who had to go to the emergency room afterwards. Therefore, the school decided that the boy was to be temporarily excluded from school. The boy’s mother chose to take him out of the school until he could attend another school. The Ombudsman wrote to the school that the decision to exclude the boy from school was so far-reaching that it constituted a decision within the meaning of the Public Administration Act. And the Ombudsman pointed to several issues in regard to the decision: The boy’s mother had not been consulted, and no written documentation of the attack on the teacher existed other than the school’s description in its reports to the Ombudsman. The boy’s mother had only been informed verbally of her son’s exclusion from school. In spite of the errors made, the Ombudsman found no grounds for criticising the school’s assessment that it had been necessary to exclude the boy from school. BOY IN 9TH GRADE TRANSFERRED TO ANOTHER SCHOOL In a different case (the Ombudsman’s Annual Report, Case No. 2015-19), a boy in the 9th grade had grossly harassed a girl in the 8th grade. The boy had also been involved in previous incidents at the school. The school therefore decided to transfer the boy to another school. The school made a decision within the meaning of the Public Administration Act by unilaterally and finally determining that the boy was to continue his schooling at a different school. This meant that the school, for instance, ought to have consulted the boy’s legal guardian prior to the decision. The school ought also to have given adequate grounds for the decision, and it should have referred to the rules of law on which the decision was based. There ought to have been made a written record of the telephone conversation in which the boy’s legal guardian was informed about the school transfer. In the Ombudsman’s opinion, it would also have been most correct to deliver the decision in written form.