Education – Home tuition – Special educational needs – Statements – Local authority’s obligations

R (on the application of TM) v Hounslow London Borough Council: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Thomas, Aikens, Patten): 11 June 2009

The appellant mother (M) appealed against a decision (TM v Hounslow LBC [2008] EWHC 2434 (Admin)) dismissing her appeal against a tribunal’s determination that her child (T) attend a maintained special school named by the respondent local authority in a statement of special educational needs.

T had been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder and suffered from dangerous self-injurious behaviour and a severe level of disability reflected in his communication, social skills and behaviour. He was educated at home where he undertook an applied behavioural analysis programme designed to prepare him for integration within a school. The relevant local education authority subsequently prepared a statement of special educational needs for T pursuant to section 323 of the Education Act 1996. The local authority identified T's special educational needs and an appropriate school and concluded that T should be educated at the named school. M objected to the local authority’s conclusion that T should be educated at school rather than at home. Her appeal against the inclusion of that provision in the statement was rejected by the tribunal. On appeal, a judge concluded that the tribunal had been right to concentrate on whether the school could meet T’s statement of needs and, having found that it could, to treat the effect of section 319 as requiring the school to be named in the statement. The issue for determination was whether, once it had been established that a school could meet a child’s educational needs, it necessarily followed that, by virtue of section 319, education at that school became appropriate.

Held: In the context of the process by which a local authority promulgated a section 323 statement, section 319 required the local authority to ask itself whether it was appropriate for special educational provision to be made in a school or elsewhere. It was not enough for a local authority to ask whether a school ‘could’ meet a child’s special educational needs; rather, it was obliged to ask whether provision of education at a school was both suitable and proper having regard to all the circumstances of the individual case including, but not limited to: (a) the child’s background and medical history; (b) costs of educational provision; and (c) parents’ wishes. On that basis, the tribunal and the judge had been wrong to conclude that once a school had been identified as meeting the educational needs of a child, it necessarily followed that, by virtue of section 319, the school had to be named in the statement of special educational needs.

Appeal allowed.

Dan Squires (instructed by John Ford) for the appellant; Peter Oldham (instructed by Treasury solicitor) for the respondent.