Education

Overview

The Landmark team, from silks to juniors, advise and represent a wide range of organisations who provide education or who are involved in its organisation, including the Department for Education, local authorities and educational institutions; as well as parents, children, students and staff within the education system.

Landmark’s barristers act in the full spectrum of education cases: admissions, exclusions, administration and governance of nurseries, schools and academies; the provision of education and services to those with disabilities and special educational needs; to admissions, expulsions and service provision whilst at universities. We also advise on governance, structure and administration issues arising at education facilities and for educational institutions.

Landmark is uniquely placed in having cross expertise in NHS, health care and social care law, and can advise in the vast number of cases where those areas interact.

The Landmark team regularly act in cases of a national profile, and some examples of recent work include in relation to:

• School exclusions, including recent challenges relying on article 4 ECHR
  
• National policy guidance, including the recent challenge to the smartphones guidance
  
• Higher education, including cases on discrimination and reasonable adjustments
  
• Franchise agreements, including determination of whether or not they constitute a possession for the purposes of the ECHR
• Ofsted inspections
• Accreditation of teacher training providers
• Student finance
• Whether the lack of damages available in a claim for discrimination by a child against a school is itself discriminatory
• Issues arising from the pandemic, including a Landmark team acting for challengers to the A-level exam grading
• School restructuring, including issues around academisation and Academy funding agreements
• Inquiry work, with Fiona Scolding KC acting as lead counsel in the residential schools investigation in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, and Galina Ward KC representing the Department for Education at the Covid inquiry.
• The right of schools to select on the grounds of religious observance and its impact upon socio-economic diversity
• Home to school transport policy
• The legality of OIA complaints procedure

The strength of the team lies in setting individual pieces of advice within a wide knowledge of the challenges in the education world. We have a hard earnt and well-deserved reputation for approachability and our desire to work in a team with those which instruct them.

Landmark counsel always seek to provide practical solutions to difficult legal problems. They recognise that litigation has to be seen as one way forward, but it is not the only tool. They have extensive litigation experience from the Supreme Court to the First Tier Tribunal and regularly advise central government, local government, charities, independent schools, Academies and maintained schools, quangos, individuals and pressure groups across the board.

Leon Glenister KC is the co-author of the ‘No-nonsense Noddy Guide to SEN Law’, a free legal guide to special educational needs and the leading legal resource on special educational needs law.