43 Vibeke Lundmark Deputy Head of Division It is daily fare in primary and lower secondary schools that pupils are reprimanded or sent out of the classroom. Sometimes, a pupil also has to go and see the school headmaster in his or her office, or a teacher has to contact parents and inform them of an unfortunate episode. But what if a pupil sets the classroom curtains on fire, steals a bike from a classmate, or cannot be accommodated in the school at all? Then the school has to take more drastic measures because here, we are beyond the point where reprimanding or sending a pupil out of the classroom makes sense. In such cases, more serious intervention is often necessary. The seriousness may entail the need, in legal terminology, to make a decision within the meaning of the law in relation to the pupil. Such a decision releases a number of procedural safeguards for both the pupil and the parents. This is when the situation gets harder for the school to handle. Fortunately, it is rare for pupils to commit such grave offences at school. However, it does happen, and in 2015, the Ombudsman concluded several such cases. For instance, one school transferred a pupil to a different school in the municipality, another school temporarily excluded a pupil from schooling, and a third school decided to establish one-on-one schooling for a pupil. All these measures were a consequence of the pupils’ behaviour. A common denominator for these cases was that the schools had not abided by the basic provisions of the Public Administration Act. From these cases – and from previous Ombudsman cases – a picture thereby emerges that it is difficult for primary and lower secondary schools to abide by the provisions within administrative law in the rare instances where they make decisions about pupils. In these situations, the children (and their parents) lose certain important procedural safeguards.