AC-2024-LDS-000204 - [2025] EWHC 1983 (Admin)

The School under challenge in these judicial review proceedings has a distinctive mission and ethos to enhance the life opportunities of children particularly from disadvantaged or complicated backgrounds by developing their self-management, social and academic skills, in combination and in close parallel, through applying a ‘rigorous’ and highly detailed conduct and discipline Policy.

The three young Claimants who bring these claims say they do not object to any of that as such, but they have been struggling to deal with the conduct expectations of the Policy, and have as a result found themselves frequently experiencing its disciplinary sanctioning consequences. In particular, they have experienced a high recurrence of sanctions involving temporary removal for up to several days at a time from whole-classroom teaching – either working under close supervision with a limited number of others in a separate part of the School, or suspended from School altogether. This has resulted in their passing substantial proportions of this academic year, in aggregate, outside ordinary classroom education. They object that this is unlawful: inconsistent with the statute law limiting schools’ sanctioning powers and with government guidance, the result of defective and over-rigid decision-making which failed to factor in the sheer cumulation of time out of class which was resulting, and contrary to their human rights.

It is in my judgment right that schools need to have regard to individual students’ substantial accumulation of disciplinary sanctions involving time out of the classroom; and even the most ‘rigorous’ of conduct and discipline policies must be applied with an open mind as to whether there might be anything about an individual frequently-sanctioned student’s circumstances which calls for flexibility or a different approach. The law does provide ultimate safeguards to these effects, and the government has provided guidance to schools to help them make policy choices and disciplinary decisions which are within the law and which represent good practice.

But I have not been able to find in the present cases that the School has failed to do what the law requires, or has crossed the boundaries of what the law or good practice permits. The law properly and fairly recognises that schools may have difficult decisions to make about what is best for their most struggling students; that they may need to factor in and balance the rights and interests of other students and school staff also when they make these decisions; that these are decisions which can and do especially engage professional educational expertise and judgment; and that different schools may do things differently.

These judicial review claims ask a court to intervene in the professional world of education provision (and parental choice), including in ways that do not appear to be precedented. I have not found a principled legal or factual basis for doing so. The claims are dismissed accordingly.