Crowley v Surrey County Council & Ors

Educational negligence requires proof of actionable breach, causation and compensable loss. Decisions influenced by educational policy are judged by whether no reasonable education authority could have made them. Decisions involving professional judgment are judged by the standard of a responsible body of professionals, subject to logical analysis.

The court must distinguish negligence from an impermissible claim for breach of statutory duty. A failure to identify or support a child’s educational needs is not actionable merely because the child slipped through the system. Where the evidence shows that reasonable assessments would probably have produced the same educational outcome, neither breach nor causation is established.

The claimant alleged that Surrey County Council and several health authorities were vicariously liable for failures by educational psychologists and speech and language therapists to identify and address his learning and language difficulties during his childhood.

He alleged that he should have received more intensive support, a statutory assessment and specialist educational placement. He also alleged that failures in education and health services contributed to his later inability to cope with schizophrenia. The court considered breach of duty, the distinction between specific language disorder and delayed language development, causation, and the effect of statutory education procedures.

1. The claim was dismissed. The claimant established only limited breaches: an educational psychologist negligently failed to advise the parents of their right to request a statutory assessment, and a speech and language therapist’s 1995 report fell below acceptable professional standards. Those breaches did not cause compensable loss.
2. The applicable negligence framework was drawn from Phelps v London Borough of Hillingdon [2001] 2 AC 619, Carty v Croydon LBC [2005] 1 WLR 2312 and Clarke v Devon County Council [2005] EWCA Civ 26. Policy-influenced educational decisions attract considerable caution. Professional judgments concerning an individual child are assessed by the standard in Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1 WLR 582, subject to the logical-analysis qualification in Bolitho v City and Hackney Health Authority [1998] AC 232.
3. The court rejected the suggestion that the authorities’ shortcomings could be treated as a back-door claim for breach of statutory duty. The distinction identified in Carty v Croydon LBC and Marr v London Borough of Lambeth [2006] EWHC 1175 had to be maintained. A public-law challenge to the statutory assessment process could not simply be recast as negligence.
4. On the evidence available during the relevant period, it was reasonable for professionals to regard the claimant’s difficulties as delayed language development associated with wider learning difficulties rather than as a readily diagnosable specific language disorder. The claimant was therefore not shown to have been negligently deprived of a specialist placement or statutory assessment.
5. Although closer communication between education and health professionals would have been desirable, it would almost certainly have produced the same conclusion. The later negligent reports were not materially influential. The required causal connection between any breach and the claimant’s alleged reduced ability to cope with schizophrenia was not established on the balance of probabilities, applying the evidential principles discussed in Gregg v Scott [2005] 2 AC 176 and DN v Greenwich [2004] EWCA Civ 1659.

First instance decision. No prior appellate decision was stated in the judgment.