Links: Home | swarblaw - law discussions

swarb.co.uk - law index


These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.  















Education - From: 1985 To: 1989

This page lists 10 cases, and was prepared on 27 May 2018.

 
Regina v Secretary of State for Education ex parte Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass Times, 12 April 1985
12 Apr 1985

Woolf J
Education
The school challenged a decision of the respondent Secretary of State to the effect that it was not providing suitable education with the threatened loss of its accreditation. The teaching was based upon a narrow bible-centred fundamentalism. Held: Woolf J said: "education is ‘suitable’ if it primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so." However: "the Secretary of State is entitled to regard a particular form of education as being too narrow but the requirements he lays down must not go beyond that which is necessary in his opinion to make the education suitable and he should be sensitive to the traditions of the minority sect and only interfere with them so far as this is necessary to make the school suitable."

 
In re D (A Minor) [1987] 1 WLR 1400
1987

Woolf LJ
Children, Education
A dispute as to whether the education authority is exercising its powers properly raises matters of public law to be determined by reference not to the principles of family law but to the principles of substantive public law applied by the Administrative Court.
Woolf LJ said: " . . there is no reason whatever why the court should refrain from exercising its jurisdiction when it is desirable for it to do so in order to assist a local education authority to perform its statutory duties. It is only if the effect of exercising its powers would be to create a conflict between the role of the court and the role of the education authority, or the risk of such conflict, that the court should decline to intervene."
1 Citers


 
Thomas v University of Bradford [1987] 1 AC 795; [1987] 1 All ER 834; [1987] ICR 245; [1987] 2 WLR 677
1987
HL
Lord Griffiths
Administrative, Education, Employment
The lecturer sought an order for the University to comply with what he understood were its own rules. The House considered the availability of a remedy of certiorari in challenging a decision of the University visitors. Held: A university is not a public body and its decisions are not subject to judicial review. Where an applicant's Convention Rights, in particular Art 6, are not engaged then the matters in dispute would presently fall exclusively within the visitorial jurisdiction of the university - subject only to the possibility that any ultimate decision of the Board of Visitors might itself be judicially reviewable. Someone such as a professor may be both office holder and employee.
Lord Griffiths said: "the exclusivity of the jurisdiction of the visitor is in English law beyond doubt and established by an unbroken line of authority spanning the last three centuries from Philips v Bury (1694) Skin 447 to Hines v Birkbeck College (1985) 3 All ER 15L." and "I now turn to consider the scope of the visitatorial jurisdiction. The jurisdiction stems from the power recognised by the common law in the founder of an eleemosynary corporation to provide the laws under which the object of his charity was to be governed and to be sole judge of the interpretation and application of these laws either by himself or by such person as he should appoint as a visitor."
1 Cites


 
Sim v Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council [1987] Ch 216
1987

Scott J
Employment, Education
The 1870 Act applied where an employee’s contract was terminated in the course of a period at the end of which payment would be made. Scott J said: "Mr Goudie submitted that the real question was whether a teacher was entitled to be paid for the period of 35 minutes that he or she had not worked. Pay for that period, he said, had not been earned. In my judgment, this approach is fallacious. It involves regarding the teachers’ salaries as accruing minute by minute. There is no legal or factual justification for that view of the salaries. Under the contracts, the salaries are based on a yearly scale but are paid by monthly payments. Each month a contractual right to a salary payment vests in the teacher. By reason of section 2 of the Apportionment Act 1870, the salaries are deemed to accrue day by day. If a teacher’s contract were, in the middle of a month, to come to an end, by death, dismissal or some other event, section 2 would entitle the teacher, or his estate, to an apportioned part of the month’s salary payment,. So the salaries may be regarded as accruing day by day. But they do not accrue minute by minute."
Though the contract was silent on the issue, there was and implied obligation on the part of teachers to cover for absent colleagues during non-teaching periods if requested to do so.
Apportionment Act 1870 2
1 Citers


 
Regina v University of London; Ex parte Vijayatunga [1988] QB 322; [1987] 3 All ER 204; [1988] 2 WLR 106
1988

Simon Brown J
Judicial Review, Education
The court considered the powers of the Visitors to the University. Simon Brown J said: "The Visitor enjoys untrammelled jurisdiction to investigate and correct wrongs done in the administration of the internal law of a Foundation to which he is appointed: a general power to right wrongs and redress grievances and if that on occasions requires the visitor to act akin rather to an Appeal Court than to a Review Court, so be it. Indeed there may well be occasions when he could not properly act other than as an essentially appellate tribunal".
As to the nature of judicial review, he said: "Judicial review is the exercise of the court's inherent power at common law to determine whether action is lawful or not; in a word to uphold the rule of law".
1 Citers


 
Bouamar v Belgium (1988) 11 EHRR 1; 9106/80; [1988] ECHR 1; [1988] ECHR 16; (1987) 11 EHRR 1; [1988] ECHR 1; [1988] ECHR 16
29 Feb 1988
ECHR

Human Rights, Children, Education
Hudoc Violation of Art. 5-1; Violation of Art. 5-4; Just satisfaction reserved; Judgment (Just satisfaction) Struck out of the list (friendly settlement)
A person detained as a juvenile in need of educational supervision should not be detained in a prison where no education is available.
1 Citers

[ Bailii ] - [ Bailii ] - [ Bailii ] - [ Bailii ]
 
Belgian State v Rene Humbel And Marie-Therese Edel (Social Policy) C-263/86; R-263/86; [1988] EUECJ R-263/86; [1989] 1 CMLR 393
27 Sep 1988
ECJ

European, Education
So far as a right of residence in order to receive services, so far as a student is concerned the relevant services are limited to those provided for remuneration.
Europa A year of study which is part of a programme forming an indivisible body of instruction preparing for a qualification for a particular profession, trade or employment or providing the necessary training and skills for such a profession, trade or employment constitutes vocational training for the purposes of the EEC Treaty.
The various years of a study programme cannot be assessed individually but must be considered within the framework of the programme as a whole, particularly in the light of the programme' s purpose, provided, however, that the programme forms a coherent single entity and cannot be divided into two parts, one of which does not constitute vocational training while the other does.
Courses taught in a technical institute which form part of the secondary education provided under the national education system cannot be regarded as services for the purposes of Article 59 of the EEC Treaty.
The first paragraph of Article 60 of the EEC Treaty provides that only services "normally provided for remuneration" are to be considered to be "services" within the meaning of the Treaty . The essential characteristic of remuneration, which lies in the fact that it constitutes consideration for the service in question, is absent in the case of courses provided under the national education system because, first of all, the State, in establishing and maintaining such a system, is not seeking to engage in gainful activity but is fulfilling its duties towards its own population in the social, cultural and educational fields and, secondly, the system in question is, as a general rule, funded from the public purse and not by pupils or their parents. The nature of that activity is not affected by the fact that pupils or their parents must sometimes pay teaching or enrolment fees in order to make a certain contribution to the operating expenses of the system.
Article 12 of Regulation No 1612/68, which provides that the children of a national of a Member State who is or has been employed in the territory of another Member State are to be admitted to that State' s general educational, apprenticeship and vocational training courses under the same conditions as the nationals of that State, if such children are residing in its territory, refers not only to rules relating to admission but also to general measures intended to facilitate educational attendance.
However, the wording used in that provision lays obligations only on the Member State in which the migrant worker resides. It does not, therefore, preclude a Member State from imposing an enrolment fee or "minerval", as a condition for admission to ordinary schooling within its territory, on children of migrant workers residing in another Member State, even when the nationals of the other Member State in question are not required to pay such a fee .
1 Citers

[ Bailii ]
 
Simpson v United Kingdom (1989) 64 DR 188
1989
ECHR

Human Rights, Education
The right to be provided with an education does not guarantee access to any particular institution provided.
European Convention on Human Rights A2
1 Citers


 
Regina v Devon County Council, ex parte George [1989] 1 AC 574; [1988] 3 WLR 1386
1989
HL
Lord Keith
Education, Administrative
A child lived 2.8 miles from school. The journey was rural and unlit. Whe he was 8, the education authority withdrew free transport saying it was practicable for a parent to walk with him. Held: The decision whether to offer support was that of the local Authority exercising its administrative discretion in the circumstancs of each case. There was material before them to support their conclusion, and it could not be set aside. Lord Keith: "It is section 55(1) under which a local education authority provides free transport to and from school for pupils who reside outside the statutory walking distance. In the case of such pupils a local education authority would be acting unreasonably if it decided that free transport was unnecessary for the purpose of providing their attendance at school, because if it were not provided the parents of these pupils would be under no legal obligation to secure their attendance".
Education Act 1944 39(2)(c)(5) 55(1)
1 Cites

1 Citers


 
Whitman v United Kingdom 13477/87
4 Oct 1989
ECHR

Human Rights, Education
Commission decision - a reasonable denial of the right to education does not violate the Convention.
1 Citers


 
Copyright 2014 David Swarbrick, 10 Halifax Road, Brighouse, West Yorkshire HD6 2AG.