Across the education sector, schools and colleges are facing mounting pressure to support increasing numbers of children and young adults with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. In particular, more mainstream and special schools are being named in Education, Health, and Care Plans (EHCPs) despite in some cases being an unsuitable setting for the child.

Our team of experts are experienced in supporting schools and colleges to respond to local authority consultations and challenge being named in an EHCP. We can prepare a robust response to the consultation, relying on the legal grounds set out in the Children and Families Act and SEND Code of Practice to challenge the placement. We can also support schools to seek increased funding for placements. We advise and guide clients through SEND Tribunals, including preparing witness statements.

We also support schools and colleges to appeal to the Secretary of State, including where the local authority has failed to engage in the consultation process appropriately. Depending on your needs we can provide advice in respect of specific placements, or provide training workshops and template documents for future use.

In addition to challenging EHCP placements, we support schools and colleges to navigate disability discrimination claims, seeking settlement where suitable to avoid potentially costly litigation and to protect the school’s reputation.

It is vital that schools and colleges have safeguarding policies and processes in place that comply with current statutory requirements. Our team of experts regularly support schools and colleges not only to implement effective and compliant practices, but to respond to complex safeguarding matters.

We support clients to prepare their safeguarding policies in line with their statutory safeguarding duties, and to manage complex safeguarding concerns including allegations against staff and child on child allegations. Our prompt and practical advice means that schools and colleges can be assured that they comply with reporting requirements, including liaising with the LADO and making any necessary referrals to bodies includes the Disclosure and Barring Service or the Teaching Regulation Agency. We can also advise on making a Serious Incident Report to the Charity Commission, and support with preparation of the report.

We support trusts and school groups to conduct due diligence of safeguarding across their schools so they can be assured that their safeguarding policies and processes are compliant with all necessary requirements and are applied consistently across their schools. We also provide bespoke safeguarding training so that schools and colleges ensure that staff understand their safeguarding obligations and how to apply safeguarding policies and procedures in practice, and that obligations to provide safeguarding training are being met.

With the inevitable increase in the use of AI in schools and colleges, our team is well placed to provide advice and guidance to schools and colleges to ensure that their use of AI complies with safeguarding requirements.  We can also review your contractual documentation to ensure that, for example, any Hire Facilities Agreements contain appropriate safeguarding obligations on third parties.

Our Safeguarding Package has been specifically designed to support schools and colleges to implement policies and practices which reflect the most up to statutory requirements and to understand core obligations. Get in touch to discuss how our Safeguarding Package can be tailored to your needs and to learn more about how we can support your school or college.

In our work with schools and colleges, we are increasingly aware of the unprecedented volume of parent complaints. Seeking support at an early stage can avoid challenges further on in the process. We provide advice to schools and colleges to ensure their complaints policies are robust and compliant, and allow for a separate, streamlined process for complaints from members of the public including former parents. Our advice can support schools to refuse a complaint at the first stage on the grounds that it is out of time or out of scope of the complaints policy, and to manage vexatious complaints at all stages of the complaints policy. We also advise schools to implement strategies to manage complainant behaviour, including creating communication strategies and the process to bar an individual from the school site.

Our team of experts is well versed in supporting schools if a complaint proceeds to an independent appeal panel. We can help collate documentation and prepare briefings for individuals attending. We are also experienced in acting as a clerk to your independent appeal panel and can assist with both the hearing and the preparation of outcome letters, containing reasoning and findings.

Increasingly, complainants are using AI to create school complaints, which means that it is now easier than ever to pursue all avenues available to them, including making a complaint to the local authority, Department for Education or to Ofsted. We are experienced in supporting schools to liaise with, for example, the Department for Education where a complaint has been raised, and to implement any recommendations made by the Department for Education.

We are experienced in providing bespoke training to schools and colleges to ensure that staff understand how to implement the complaints policy, including how to manage unreasonable complaints. Working with experts across Forbes, we can support schools to remove parent posts from social media and tackle abusive conduct in parent WhatsApp groups.

Ofsted inspections are undoubtedly a difficult time for many schools.  The recent changes that Ofsted has introduced and forthcoming changes can give rise to confusion in how best to prepare for an inspection. We can offer schools advice and guidance on the recent and upcoming changes to the Ofsted inspection process, to ensure that schools are confident that they know what to expect when an inspection is upcoming.

We can support schools to prepare for inspections by carrying out an overall ‘health check’ of the governance of your school, including a review of key statutory policies, as well as advising your school leadership team as to what to expect during a new Ofsted inspection. We now offer a Risk and Compliance package, tailored to your individual school’s needs, which includes a governance audit, behaviour and exclusions review, children protection and safeguarding review, and a review of parental complaints.

If the outcome of an inspection is not as expected, we support schools to challenge Ofsted decisions, ensuring that the challenge meets the requirements set by Ofsted and is prepared robustly to have the best chance of success.