Education Law in UK Law

The Strasbourg jurisprudence, summarised above in paras 11-13, makes clear how article 2 should be interpreted. 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?

The correct approach is first to ask whether there was a denial of a Convention right. In the case of article 2 of the First Protocol, that would have required a systemic failure of the educational system which resulted in the respondent not having access to a minimum level of education. As there was no such failure, that is the end of the matter.

In order to come within the Act the grant has to be for one or more of the three purposes mentioned in section 2 i.e. for the education of poor persons, or for the residence of a schoolmaster or schoolmistress, or otherwise for the purposes of the education of such poor persons in religious and useful knowledge. But the Act does not expressly or impliedly require the grant either to be for all of those purposes or to be for purposes expressed in those very words.

It would appear, therefore, than there is a discretion in the local education authority which they must exercise in accordance with the terms of the statute: and there is also a duty laid upon them by section 40 (2) of the Act of 1944 to take stops prescribed in that section in the circumstances therein laid down if in their view, there is a breach of any order siade by the?

For these reasons I reach the conclusion that an education authority owes no common law duty of care in the exercise of the powers and discretions relating to children with special educational needs specifically conferred on them by the Act of 1981.

Traditionally we ought simply to apply the natural and ordinary meaning of the two words "ordinarily resident" in the context of this statute in 1962 at the time when it became law. If we were to do that here, I feel I would apply the test submitted by Mr. Lester. The words "ordinarily resident" mean that the person must be habitually and normally resident here, apart from temporary or occasional absences of long or short duration.

Unless, therefore, it can be shown that the statutory framework or the lesal context in which the words are used requires a different meaning, I unhesitatingly subscribe to the view that "ordinarily resident" refers to a man's abode in a particular place or country which he has adopted voluntarily and for settled purposes as part of the regular order of his life for the time being, whether of short or long duration.