In a Written Ministerial Statement made yesterday, 27 October 2016, the Secretary of State for Education confirmed that the Education Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech (with the aim of introducing forced academy conversions for all schools), had been abandoned.

The Secretary of State confirmed that:
“Our ambition remains that all schools should benefit from the freedom and autonomy that academy status brings. our focus, however, is on building capacity in the system and encouraging schools to convert voluntarily. no changes to legislation are required for these purposes and therefore we do not require wider education legislation in this session to make progress on our ambitious education agenda”.

The Department for Education currently has three Bills before Parliament – the Children and Social Work Bill (as to which, see my post on the 11KBW Community Care blog), the Higher Education and Research Bill and the Technical and Further Education Bill (introduced on 27 October). The Schools that Work for Everyone consultation (proposing more grammar school places) remains ongoing. It is due to end in mid-December, with a White Paper to follow.

11KBW is ‘the standout set for education law in terms of strength in depth’ Legal 500

The 11KBW Education Group are holding their annual education conference on Wednesday 30 November 2016.  The conference will be divided into two separate sessions – schools and academies in the morning and universities in the afternoon with a lunch for all in the middle of the day.  The topics to be covered are listed below and both sessions will be chaired by Peter Oldham QC and include the opportunity for questions and answers.   Read more »

In my post on 19 May (below), I highlighted that a decision of the First-Tier Tribunal that Beis Aharon Jewish school was in breach of various independent school standards was reached without consideration of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides for a right to manifest one’s religious belief. Section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 requires Tribunals themselves to make decisions in accordance with human rights like Article 9. Read more »

A v B Local Authority and C Governing Body of School [2016] EWCA Civ 766 is concerned with whether an ET had been entitled to find that a Head Teacher of a primary school had been fairly summarily dismissed for gross misconduct, i.e. putting the safety of children at risk, for failing to disclose to the school authorities her close personal relationship with a male (IS) convicted of making indecent images of children by downloading them onto his computer. The ET’s finding was upheld by the EAT (Wilkie J presiding) and has now been upheld by a majority in the Court of Appeal (Black and Floyd LJJ).  Elias LJ dissented. Read more »

The Isle of Wight Council has announced that it has applied for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court against the Divisional Court’s judgment in the Platt case about term-time holiday prosecutions. The Council explains that it is appealing following a formal request from the Secretary of State for Education, who is funding the appeal and will seek to be joined as an interested party. Read more »

The National College of Teaching & Leadership regulates teachers’ professional conduct on behalf of the Secretary of State. The Teachers’ Disciplinary (England) Regulations 2012 provide for the policing of “Teachers’ Standards”, a document published by SoS, which has a section entitled “Personal and Professional Conduct”. This includes the following:-

“Teachers uphold public trust in the profession and maintain high standards of ethics and behaviour, within and outside school, by: … not undermining fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.” Read more »

The Divisional Court’s judgment in Isle of Wight Council v Platt [2016] EWHC 1283 (Admin) is now available. See my previous posts on the topic.

The judgment provides further information about the factual background. Mr Platt’s daughter (M) had had two unauthorised absences in the school year in question. First, she had been absent for a week in February when she had been on holiday with Mr Platt’s ex-wife. Secondly, she had been absent for seven school days in April when she went on holiday with Mr Platt (which was the relevant absence). Before that April holiday, her attendance for the school year had been 95% and afterwards it was 90.3%. The local authority’s documents indicated that attendance of 90-95% was satisfactory. Read more »

There is a rare example of a successful challenge to an OFSTED nursery inspection in R ota Old Co-operative Day Nursery Ltd v OFSTED [2016] EWHC 1126, handed down last week, which can be found here.

In September 2013, the nursery received a glowing OFSTED report. Some months later, OFSTED received a complaint about a child at the nursery getting into the road, and it carried out what the nursery said was an investigation into the complaint, and an inspection.  OFSTED produced a very critical draft report, with a notice to improve. Some stipulations were held by the judge to be “so vague as to be meaningless” (though those in the field might not think that the one referred to in the judgment is very different from many they will have come across).  Further, OFSTED published on its website an “Outcome Summary”, which recorded that the investigation found that children’s safety had been compromised and that the provider had been sent a notice to improve. Read more »

For those, like me, who keep a close eye on the development of the law on religious rights and freedoms, the decision of the First-Tier Tribunal in Beis Aharon Trust v Secretary of State for Education is certainly eye-catching.

Beis Aharon School is an independent Orthodox Jewish school in Hackney. It appealed against a decision of the Secretary of State ordering it to stop admitting new pupils from 23 October 2015 because it was failing to meet a number of the legislative standards applying to all independent schools (religious or not).

The Tribunal upheld the Secretary of State’s order. Read more »