SUMMARIES OF SELECTED CASES Firstly, the Ombudsman looked into the question of the legal basis for the study and house rules. Though the Ombudsman found it doubtful whether the rules of the boarding school could be issued under the authority of the written rules on the establishment of study and house rules, he also found that house rules for the boarding school itself could be established based on its institution status, meaning a public institution’s authority to establish such rules as are necessary for the institution to function. In other words, the Ombudsman was of the opinion that house rules could be established which applied for the boarders when they were inside the boarding school’s perimeters, also during their leisure time, and when they were outside this area in contexts related to the boarding school. The Ombudsman then considered whether the house rules could also be applied to students’ behaviour during their leisure time. In this context, the Ombudsman found that, without a clear statutory authority, it was unwarranted that the student was expelled as a result of behaviour during his leisure time and without evidence that he had been (visibly) drug-affected when he returned to the boarding school or that he had smoked cannabis in a context in which he was identified with the day or boarding school. Based on these circumstances, the Ombudsman found that it could not be established that the student’s leisuretime behaviour had had such an impact on the day or boarding school’s functioning that it could warrant expulsion. Lastly, the Ombudsman was of the opinion that the Ministry of Education had to provide specific statutory authority if the Ministry found that also the boarding school should be covered by the written rules on the establishment of study and house rules, or if, both in relation to the day school and the boarding school, it should be possible to apply sanctions as a result of the behaviour of students outside school hours and outside the perimeters of the day and boarding school. 145