It is the local authority’s (LA) duty to “make arrangements for the provision of suitable education at school or otherwise than at school for those children of compulsory school age who, by reason of illness, exclusion from school or otherwise, may not for any period receive suitable education unless such arrangements are made for them.” This is set out in section 19 of the Education Act 1996.  

If your LA has stopped funding your child’s alternative education and no other arrangements are in place for them to receive suitable education, then your local authority is in breach of its legal duty under section 19.

You can take action. You can write to your LA to tell it that it is in breach of its duty under section 19 of the Education Act 1996. If your child has an EHC plan and is not receiving the special educational provision in it, then also tell your LA about this and that it is in breach of section 42 of the Children and Families Act 2014. 

In your letter you should say that if the LA does not provide a satisfactory response within 5 working days, setting out how and when the education your child is entitled to will be put in place, you will take advice on legal action including judicial review.

You can use our template letter 22 and adapt it to refer to your situation. This letter is Template letter 22: asking the local authority to arrange alternative education.

If you send this letter and the LA does not provide a satisfactory response, you have two further options:

  1. if the situation is urgent and a complaint would take too long to sort out, you could take advice on starting a process called judicial review, or
  2. you may prefer to complain using your LA’s complaints process but first check how long this would take. A compulsory school age child not receiving suitable, full-time education is a very serious and urgent matter and your LA’s complaints process may take too long and therefore not be appropriate.

You can find out more information about these topics on our website:

Compulsory school age

Judicial review

Taking action when things go wrong with a local authority

Alternative education for children who cannot attend school 

Enforcing your EHC plan