Education Centre in UK Law

In my judgement, it is not equitable to extend the limitation period in this case. CLC, who are very familiar with the law relating to education, were instructed on 14 th April 2002 but no application for judicial review was made until 30 th May 2003, an application that foundered on the LSC's refusal to grant funding because a school place was going to be made available from the end of July 2003.

Secondly, it is clear that the court's approach to an issue of proportionality under the Convention must go beyond that traditionally adopted to judicial review in a domestic setting. The domestic court must now make a value judgment, an evaluation, by reference to the circumstances prevailing at the relevant time ( Wilson v First County Trust Ltd (No 2) [2003] UKHL 40, [2004] 1 AC 816, paras 62-67).

The Strasbourg jurisprudence, summarised above in paras 11-13, makes clear how article 2 should be interpreted. There is no right to education of a particular kind or quality, other than that prevailing in the state. The test, as always under the Convention, is a highly pragmatic one, to be applied to the specific facts of the case: have the authorities of the state acted so as to deny to a pupil effective access to such educational facilities as the state provides for such pupils?

What to my mind is abundantly clear is that the Defendant earnestly and sincerely wanted the Claimant to attend school. The Claimant had a choice, either of returning to school wearing the school uniform or of refusing to wear the school uniform knowing that if she did so refuse the Defendant was unlikely to allow her to attend. In my judgment it cannot be said the actions or stance of the school amounted to exclusion, either formal, informal, unofficial or in any way whatsoever.

The statutory mechanisms in place which enable students to question the results of examinations have become more elaborate in the intervening 11 years. But the essence of Lord Woolf's point that a Court is not well placed to engage in questions which go to academic merit remains good law. That said, I do not consider that the claimant's attack of OXILP in this claim engages academic judgement in the sense being discussed by Lord Woolf.

Special educational provision is, in principle, whatever is called for by a child's learning difficulty. A learning difficulty is anything inherent in the child which makes learning significantly harder for him than for most others or which hinders him from making use of ordinary school facilities.

Nonetheless, I have to say that Ms Pavlou's letter of 4 July could and should have been more gently worded, given the means, background and difficulties with English of the Claimant's family. The letter gave the impression that the redecoration of the room was a pre-condition to the re-integration of the Claimant, rather than something that would be discussed at the meeting.