M v Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal

In determining special educational provision, a tribunal must identify the provision required before deciding where it should be delivered. It must read its decision as a whole, rather than treating isolated words as statutory provisions.

Where a school placement is found appropriate, the statutory gateway to provision otherwise than in a school is not satisfied. Parental preference must be considered under the general principle in the Education Act 1996, section 9, but it is not decisive where the child’s educational needs point to another placement.

A tribunal may use its expertise to evaluate evidence before it and need not invite further submissions on conclusions properly arising from the hearing. Summary reasons are sufficient where they make the basis of the decision apparent.

The claimant appealed against a decision of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal concerning her child, D, who had special educational needs, ADHD and mild dyspraxia. The parents wished D to remain temporarily at a specialist unit funded privately, while the local education authority proposed a mainstream placement at Kensal Rise Primary School.

The Tribunal amended Part 2 of D’s statement, made limited amendments to Part 3, and dismissed the appeal concerning Part 4. The claimant challenged the decision on grounds including failure to determine the required provision, misdirection under sections 319 and 324 of the Education Act 1996, procedural unfairness, inadequate reasons and an alleged error concerning costs.

1. Appeal dismissed. None of the grounds of appeal was established.
2. As to the required provision, the Tribunal had addressed the claimant’s case for a highly structured specialist environment. It had considered the evidence supporting the New Learning Centre, but concluded that its disadvantages, including limited access to the National Curriculum and limited opportunities for integration, were outweighed by other considerations. The Tribunal therefore had not failed to determine D’s special educational provision.
3. Sections 324 and 319 of the Education Act 1996 require the provision to be identified before the question of placement is determined. S v Bracknell Forest Council [1999] ELR 51 and R v Kingston upon Thames Council, ex parte Hunter [1997] ELR 223 supported that approach. Reading the Tribunal’s decision as a whole, its reference to investigating whether D could be educated in a school did not show that it had decided placement in the abstract.
4. The passage from C v Buckinghamshire County Council [1999] ELR 179 relied on by the claimant was taken out of context and was not the ratio of that case. Parental preference had to be considered, but was not binding. More fundamentally, T v Special Educational Needs Tribunal v Wiltshire County Council [2002] ELR 704 correctly stated that, once school provision was found appropriate, section 319 provided no power to arrange non-school provision.
5. The Tribunal acted fairly in limiting the description of D’s dyspraxia. It was entitled, as an expert decision-making body, to form a view from the evidence and matters canvassed at the hearing. Its summary reasons adequately explained the partial success of the appeal, consistently with regulation 30(2) of the Special Educational Needs Tribunal Regulations.
6. Even assuming an error in calculating the cost of the school placement, the error could not have affected the outcome. The specialist provision remained considerably more expensive and the other decisive factors remained unchanged.

This was a statutory appeal to the Administrative Court from the decision of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal promulgated on 8 November 2002. The Tribunal had partly allowed the appeal concerning Part 2 of the statement, amended Part 3 in relation to transition, and dismissed the appeal concerning the named school in Part 4. The Administrative Court dismissed the statutory appeal.