Keep children, families, and teachers safe following start of new school year

Fiona Scolding QC and Yaaser Vanderman have written legal advice, commissioned by the Good Law Project, as to the potential unlawfulness of penalising (by fixed penalty notice or prosecution) parents for non-school attendance of children who are themselves, or who have household members that are, particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. The advice concludes that: (1) fines or prosecutions for not attending school could - depending on the facts - be unlawful; and (2) vulnerable children or children who belong to vulnerable families may have a legal right to be provided with an education at home. The advice can be found here. For more information on this project, please follow this link.