school will have to be sentenced again after Chief Justice Austin Ward ruled that it had been done under the wrong act.

The boys, who pleaded guilty to setting fire to Harrington Sound Primary school in February 1999, had been sentenced to two years in an approved society earlier this month.

But under current law they should have been admitted to the care of the director of child and family services as approved societies no longer exist.

At an appeal hearing in the Supreme Court yesterday it was ruled that the case must be sent back to Family Court magistrate Carlisle Greaves and two lay members at a date yet to be fixed.