High Court dismisses challenge to guidance on the…

On 30 January, the High Court dismissed a challenge against a special school’s decision to shorten its school day on Fridays during part of the 2025 academic year. The ruling came in the case R (CHO, by his litigation friend CRL) v (1) Governing Body of Lonsdale School; (2) Hertfordshire County Council; (3) Secretary of State for Education [2026] EWHC 166 (Admin), following an expedited rolled-up hearing.

The claimant argued that the decision was unlawful and discriminatory; breached statutory requirements on school sessions; and either was inconsistent with Department for Education non-statutory guidance entitled “Length of the school week” (“the Guidance”), or alternatively that the Guidance itself was discriminatory and unlawful. The Guidance exempts specialist settings from the mainstream ‘minimum expectation’ of delivering 32.5 hours, but includes them in an “overall ambition to increase the length of the school week, where it is beneficial for their pupils to do so”.

The Administrative Court granted permission but ultimately dismissed the claim. The Court held that decisions about school session times were a matter for, and had in fact been taken by, the school’s governing body rather than the local authority, and that the evidence showed the decision was taken in response to acute and unforeseen staffing shortages rather than as a cost-cutting measure.

As to the Guidance, the court accepted the claimant’s argument that the challenge to the Guidance was brought in time, holding that the principle in R (Delve) v SSWP [2020] EWCA Civ 1199 did not apply because it was not inevitable that the Guidance would be applied to the claimant. However, the Judge rejected the claim that the Guidance was discriminatory. Mainstream schools and special schools were not in an equivalent position, and given diverse needs of pupils in special schools it was “too crude a proposition to contend that to allow special schools to run a shorter school week for operational or financial reasons is to subject its disabled pupils to a detriment of any kind [as] the shorter school week may be directly in their interests and to their benefit”. The Guidance did not discriminate whether directly or indirectly.

Finally, the Court held that the reduced hours did not contravene the requirement in regulation 3(1) that “every day on which a school meets shall be divided into two sessions and shall be separated by a breach in the middle of the day unless exceptional circumstances make this undesirable”. The Judge accepted that the reference to “two sessions” must mean two periods of time in which “meaningful education” is provided to pupils; however, “meaningful education” could encompass activities outside the classroom, and was particularly broad in the case of specialist education provision. The Friday afternoon session included structured and varied learning activities which were linked to pupils’ ECHP targets, and was “plainly capable of amounting to special educational provision”. It did not matter that the Friday afternoon session was short and came to an end at 1:30pm, as there was no requirement that the two sessions should be equal length.

Leon Glenister and Siân McGibbon acted for the Secretary of State for Education, instructed by the Government Legal Department.