The needs of a child, as to educational and non-educational overlapped, and accordingly, it was within the discretion of the Special Needs Tribunal to include among the educational needs of a child others within that overlap. Physiological, occupational, and speech therapy, were all properly included within the educational needs assessment. The court explained the nature of the Tribunal’s functions: ‘the first independent arbiter of this question [viz. a question as to the special educational provision to be specified in Part 3 of the statement] is the tribunal. Unlike the High Court, it is a specialist tribunal with a lawyer chairman and lay members chosen for their knowledge and experience.
In my view this restructuring has jurisprudential implications. Where previously the parent’s only resort from the local education authority was to the court, which had therefore to do its best to construe the statutory language in so far as construction was an appropriate exercise, there is now interposed a specialist tribunal whose remit is not necessarily the same. In particular, where a court has to limit itself to the interpretation of terms of legal art and the setting of outer limits to the meaning of ordinary words in their statutory context, the tribunal is empowered to take a much closer look at the LEA’s statement. Indeed, for many purposes it stands in the LEA’s shoes, re-evaluating the available information in order if necessary to recast the statement. But in carrying out this function it also has a supervisory role – to interpret and apply the relevant law. Where that law is expressed in words which, while not terms of legal art, have a purpose dictated by – and therefore a meaning coloured by – their context, it is clearly Parliament’s intention that particular respect should be paid to the tribunal’s conclusions.’
Judges:
Sedley LJ
Citations:
Times 14-Jun-1999, [1999] EWCA Civ 1490, [1999] ELR 260
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Regina on the Application of MH v the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal, the London Borough of Hounslow CA 25-Jun-2004
The child was subject to a statement of special educational needs. His parents expressed a preference for one mainstream school, but the authority allocated him to another. The court had been requested to give guidance on the meaning and effect of . .
Cited – K v The School and the Special Needs and Disability Tribunal CA 6-Mar-2007
The child was subject to the school eventually declined to clean and change him. The mother claimed that the school was discriminating.
Held: The mother had understated the frequency of the bowel accidents. The school was not properly equipped . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Education
Updated: 09 December 2022; Ref: scu.78671