Gloucestershire council fined after failing to find appropriate school for child with SEN
Ross Watson
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Gloucestershire County Council has been ordered to pay a parent 6,500 after telling her to send her son to a school that did not meet his special educational needs (SEN), according to a Local Government Ombudsman report published today.
The child in question, referred to as "Michael" in the report, was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in 2006.
His mother, referred to as "Ms Clarke" in the report, pulled Michael out of school in September 2007 as she felt it was no longer attempting to meet his needs due to growing concerns over his behaviour.
But Ms Clarke claimed she was unable to work from October 2007 to May 2008 after the council firstly failed to provide her with suitable home tuition and then recommended her son attended a new school that did not meet her approval. The ombudsman found that the council persisted in naming the new school on her son’s amended statement in January 2008, despite the fact it was not appropriate to meet his needs and had poor inspection records.
"It is clear that there were practical obstacles to Michael ever attending the school. First, only a few days after naming the school on Michael’s statement, the school experienced significant staffing problems and this particularly affected Michael’s year group for a time," said the ombudsman. "Second, the school had no teaching-assistant capacity for Michael in the first place, which was required to provide the one-to-one tuition identified on his statement."
The report also found that although the council had accepted the new school was not viable for Michael in March 2008, it did not look for an alternative or tell Ms Clarke until May 2008.
The ombudsman concluded that the council could not be held responsible for Michael’s loss of education between October 2007 and January 2008, but was guilty of maladministration thereafter, having failed to find Michael a new school despite removing him from his old school’s roll.
In the report, the ombudsman accepted his decision may have implications for councils, but said each case must be judged on its merits. "While I do not consider a parent can demand the council must provide full-time tuition for a child removed from school at their whim, I expect the council to fulfil the expectations placed upon it by government," he added.
