Educational Judicial Review
Our education team are specialists in judicial review cases which relate to education law. No one should feel powerless when a public body (such as a local authority, maintained schools, a university, the office of the independent adjudicator for higher education (OIA), Ofsted or an NHS trust) acts unlawfully.
Judicial review proceedings can be brought against a public body when it makes a decision, takes an action or fails to take an action which can be considered unlawful. A case must be lodged at the High Court within 3 months.
With our cases, it is rare that we must go as far as lodging proceedings – in many cases through successful pre-action correspondence and negotiation we can resolve matters to our clients’ satisfaction.
Services we provide:
- Advising on whether a public body has acted unlawfully
- Advising and conducting pre-action judicial review correspondence with a public body
- Advising on whether to lodge judicial review proceedings.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of types of case, which may result in judicial review proceedings. This includes failure by a local authority to:
- Comply with statutory time limits for completing an education health and care (‘EHC’) assessment
- Issue a final EHC plan within statutory time limits after conducting an EHC assessment, or failure to implement outlined provision in that plan.
- Make a decision to amend or not to amend an EHC plan following an annual review
- Meet statutory time limits for amending an EHC plan where a child or young person is in a year of transfer to their next education setting
- Provide transport for students with EHC plans, or unlawfully removing transport arranged by a local authority
- Provide an education for students out of school
- Unlawful school or local authority policies
- Unlawful decisions or actions by a University or the OIA
- Unlawful policies by a University or the OIA
