Education Act/Placing Requests and Appeals Lawyers Glasgow, Scotland

If you or your family have been involved in a placing request that has been refused, you would benefit from technical legal advice from a solicitor to deal with framing of an Appeal correctly. Head of the family department, Julia Donnelly, and Senior Associate, Nicola Watson, are very experienced in this area of law and would be pleased to assist you and offer their advice. They have supported many parents by successfully challenging decisions of local authorities to refuse placing requests, and securing a place for their children in schools of choice.

We appreciate that choosing the right school for your child is one of the most important decisions you will make for them. We can assist you in providing legal advice and representation in connection with your rights to challenge refusal decisions before local authority Education Committees, and by appealing to the Sheriff against your Local Education Authority’s decision. 

The ethos in this area is to focus on parental choice. There is a duty to secure that education is directed to the development of your child’s personality, talents and physical abilities to their fullest potential. The child’s views must be taken into account of their age and stage of maturity. The default position in the relevant legislation is that the Education Authority is prohibited from refusing a placing request unless one or more of specific statutory grounds are present, and even if these exist, the court can override these considerations and focus on the unique needs of the particular child. 

Contact our family lawyers for Glasgow, Scotland

With expert legal advice we can help you in presenting your case as effectively as possible to focus on the implications for your own child of exclusion from a school where it may be that he has siblings attending or can achieve the best possible education to meet his particular needs. In many cases in which we have dealt with, we have successfully persuaded the courts as to the necessity of overriding objections of the Education Authority and making a place available in the school of choice. 

The law in this area has an extremely complex statutory framework developed by a process of amendment.  There are several pieces of legislation such as the standards in Scotland’s schools etc Scotland Act 2000 which set out the Authority’s duty to secure improvements in the quality of school education.  Such provisions together with the terms of the united convention on the rights of the child 1989 which expresses rights of children in respect of education can be relied upon in addition to the ethos of the Education Scotland Act 1980 dubbed the “parents charter” to support your case.

If you or your family have been involved in a placing request and need our help please do not hesitate to contact any one of us,  and we can offer further help and advice tailored to your needs.