Case overview

This case was heard under the old legal framework, but it is still relevant because the principles remain the same. The child had a Statement of special educational needs, now known as an education, health and care (EHC) plan. Their parent disagreed with its contents and appealed to the SEND Tribunal.

The SEND Tribunal made some changes to the Statement and ordered a pupil referral unit (PRU) to be named in it.

The parent said the SEND Tribunal had made some legal mistakes, and the High Court agreed. The High Court said the SEND Tribunal should have:

1. Clearly recorded the provision of an occupational therapist necessary to meet the child’s needs regarding their dyspraxia.  Failure to refer to an occupational therapist was a failure to include specific provision that should have been included.
2. Determined whether it was appropriate for the child to follow the whole of the National Curriculum. This was important to help it decide whether the PRU was an appropriate setting, because PRUs do not have to follow the whole of the National Curriculum. The SEND Tribunal did not have enough evidence to decide whether the National Curriculum should be disapplied, so it ordered that the Statement should include provision for an assessment to determine this. However, this was wrong because it should have worked out the needs of the child instead of writing in to the Statement that an assessment would be carried out by someone else. This is important because the parents would not have been able to appeal against this later assessment. If the SEND Tribunal did not have enough information to decide this point, and the information was vital to the case, it should have delayed the hearing and directed the parties to get more evidence.
3. Not ordered the PRU to be named in the Statement. The child required provision of a broad and balanced curriculum, access to an appropriate peer group, and to be taught in small groups with pupils of similar needs. Yet the PRU only offered core National Curriculum subjects and had no pupils of the same age as the child. The child would have had to go to an unidentified further education college for part of his time in order to be taught in a small group with similar peers. Given these facts, it was unclear how the SEND Tribunal could have decided, on the evidence before it, that the child’s needs could be met by the PRU.

What does this mean?

Although this case deals with Statements, the same considerations apply to EHC plans:

• they must be specific, and
• the placement named in Section I must be able to meet the needs set out in Section B and make the provision specified in Section F.

No case report is available online.

For more information, please see our information on what an EHC plan should contain and choosing a school or other setting with an EHC plan.