An altar boy from Montserrat was compensated for failing the "probationary period."

BarcelonaA judge in Manresa has issued an unprecedented ruling regarding the Montserrat Choir School. The case concerns an altar boy who, after a boarding school year at Montserrat, was unable to continue his studies because the school argued that he had not "passed the probationary period." The legal proceedings have brought to the fore the limits of the organizational autonomy of private schools, and finally, the judge sided with the family, who claimed that the expulsion had been "an arbitrary decision." The ruling by Manresa's First Instance Court No. 1 ordered the Montserrat Choir School to pay the family €15,000 in compensation.

The boy joined the Choir School in the 2021-2022 school year, when he was in 5th grade. At the end of the school year, the family received news that he would not be able to continue the following year. The boy had passed several tests to enter the Choir School, including a psychological test and singing tests, and was finally accepted for his "excellent musical abilities" and "good academic standing." Therefore, he became a live-in altar boy.

Late in the school year, in March, the Choir School's prefect warned the parents via email that he could not guarantee the boy would pass the first year of probation. As the ruling states, he warned them that their son had "many academic and musical qualities, but personal difficulties." In other meetings and messages, however, he "gave them hope" that he could continue. The messages from the school, the ruling adds, were always "confusing and ambiguous," and did not mention specific incidents that could support the decision to remove the boy from the school.

"No specific incidents"

In fact, based on the questioning of the school director, the judge concludes that there is "no specific incident that supports the decision" that the boy could not continue at the Choir School. His statement at the trial, the judge says, was "full of abstract statements," and he defined the problems with the boy as "unsustainable situations" and "coexistence problems," but "without detailing any specific incidents." Furthermore, the judge points out that the student earned good grades and that no disciplinary proceedings had been opened against him, while some students did continue at the school after having proceedings opened against them for minor or serious offenses.

It wasn't until the end of the school year that the school announced that the boy could not continue at the Choir School. In the lawsuit filed by the family, represented by lawyer Noelia Rebón, they alleged that setting a one-year probationary period for underage students "is an abusive clause." The parents' lawsuit was supported by the Prosecutor's Office, which also considers the Choir's actions arbitrary and believes the minor's fundamental rights have been violated.

Hardly unprecedented

This is a case without much jurisprudence, only a Supreme Court ruling that had already ruled that the expulsion of a teenager from a private school had been arbitrary. The Manresa judge also took into account Catalan and Spanish education laws, the law for the protection of minors, and the article of the Constitution that enshrines the right to education. Specifically, Spanish education law regulates the ability of private schools to set their own rules and their organizational autonomy, although the judge points out that it is not unlimited. For its part, the law for the protection of minors establishes that children have the right to be heard before any decision that may affect them is made.

Based on this legal basis, the judge finds that the minor's fundamental right to education has been violated. She also accuses the Choir School of stating that the fact that the child could not continue at the school was "a radical decision taken unilaterally and without objective reasons."

Compensation

In the lawsuit, the parents alleged that the Montserrat Choir School had not respected its own operating rules, as it decided that their son would not continue at the school when there was no longer any time to pre-register him at another school. The fact that the decision was communicated so late has been one of the family's arguments for claiming financial compensation to cover the cost of having sought a school with similar characteristics outside of Catalonia, since the boy went on to study at the Royal Alfonso XII School of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

For its part, the Montserrat Choir School has denied having expelled the student and maintained that the boy had not "passed the probationary period." In summary, it argued that "the final decision by which the minor could not continue at the Montserrat Choir School was due to attitudinal problems and not arbitrariness." However, the ruling has also ordered them to pay the costs of the legal proceedings.