Education Law for Individuals

In this episode of DC Talks, Doyle Clayton’s education law team explains how they support parents, pupils and students with issues ranging from school admissions and safeguarding to university complaints and academic appeals.

They provide clear, practical guidance on resolving complex and often emotional situations, with a focus on early, effective outcomes—whether through negotiation or formal action where needed.

The discussion also highlights key trends, including AI-related misconduct cases, evolving special educational needs challenges, and the growing tension between free speech and student protections in higher education.

Overall, the episode emphasises expert, supportive advice to help individuals protect their education and future prospects.

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Transcript

Emma O'Connor: 00:08

Welcome to DC Talks, a podcast series from workplace specialist law firm Doyle Clayton, where we take a deeper dive into the legal, leadership or HR hot topic and in this episode, we are talking about education law for individuals but before we take a deep dive into this topic and I introduce my guests on this podcast, just a reminder that we are not giving you legal advice. This is a podcast, so if you want to find out more about the topics that we are discussing, then please do get in touch with us and all the information you need will be in the show notes. So, education law for individuals. Well, I'm thrilled to be joined by two of my colleagues in our education team, Celia Whittuck, who's a senior associate. Hi, Celia.

Celia Whittuck 00:59

Hi, Emma.

Emma O'Connor: 01:00

And Victoria Dennis, who again is a solicitor in our education team. So welcome to DC Talks, both of you.

Emma O'Connor: 01:07

Before we talk a little bit about what you do, who you help, and the solutions that you give to your clients, I just thought it'd be really helpful to give a bit of background about what led you to become education lawyers. Celia, if you want to start us off.

Celia Whittuck: 01:23

Thanks Emma. So, prior to transferring into education law, I specialised in children law for many years and I was on the Law Society Children's Panel for 10 years, dealing primarily with child protection and safeguarding issues and so that has transferred nicely over into education law, where I do a lot of work for children through their parents in relation to safeguarding issues such as bullying at school and even further within that, I have a particularly keen interest in helping children with special educational needs.

Emma O'Connor: 02:00

That's fantastic. Thank you, Celia, for giving us that background and Victoria, what led you to become an education lawyer?

Victoria Denis: 02:07

I originally trained at a U.S. firm that specifically represented victims of sexual violence and abuse institutionally, so I started out primarily working on personal injury cases, cross-jurisdictional ones, and that led me into US higher education. So, I dealt with a lot of Title IX cases amongst American university students and then when I started my training contract for the duration, basically, I was working on UK higher education. So,  kind of a whistle-stop tour in all of the various facets of institutional concerns within higher ed, but that's what landed me here.

Emma O'Connor: 02:49

Fantastic. Thank you very much and Celia, you mentioned a little bit there about who you help and you mentioned sort of children and parents. Do you want to just give us a little bit of information about how you might help children and parents?

Celia Whittuck: 03:04

Sure. We cover the full breadth of a person's education and career. So right from nursery pupils all the way up to university students and masters, PhD. Specifically within schools, we cover things such as admissions appeals. So, if a child doesn't get the school place that you would like them to have, then we can assist with appeals to try and get them into the school that you wanted. As I mentioned before, bullying and safeguarding issues supporting a parent to challenge the school about their approach, potentially to bullying issues. With regard to special educational needs, I mentioned before, I work with parents to support them to work with schools to ensure that the child has the right support in place at school. Beyond that, if a child needs even more support through an education, health and care plan, then I can work with the family to challenge the local authority to provide the relevant support in the education, health and care plan. Moving on further up the educational career, I can deal with things such as 11 plus appeals, exclusions of children from school and challenging those exclusions, GCSE results, appeals against grades in certain circumstances, and generally speaking, complaints with independent schools and mainstream schools, and where there are complaints with independent schools, that can incorporate fee disputes as well.

Emma O'Connor: 04:59

And Victoria, you talked about higher education and higher education institutions and now, as I know, as a team, as an education team, we support universities, higher education institutions, and also schools more generally with their employment and HR issues. But you just like very specific, don't you, with regards to supporting individuals who are at universities, for example, or want to get into certain universities? Just explain a bit about what you do.

Victoria Denis: 05:31

Yes, from the starting phases of your university journey, we assist at the further education level. So, we assist college students in their exams, maybe exam appeals, access arrangements, as well as complaints against their colleges so that's very much the precursor, but still very relevant to our higher education practice. Because once we get to the university level, it kind of expands from undergraduate students, postgraduate, doctoral, PhD students and a lot of that does really kind of flow together in a really cohesive way and in the same way, we do exam appeals, complaints for any aspect of the educational services a student's receiving but then we do really specific things like fitness to practice, fitness to study, so that does incorporate some regulatory tangential elements as well, but it's very specific to the university experience, as well as the OIA, so the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, we do complaints in that remit and then if things can't be resolved on an institutional level for whatever reason, we have a breadth of experience litigating breach of contract, negligence, judicial review, discrimination, claims, we do the full gambit.

Emma O'Connor: 06:55

Victoria, you talked about fee disputes when you were explaining a little bit about what you do and who you support. I just wondered if you could explain a little bit more about what you mean about fee disputes and maybe give us an example of a case that you've had across your desk.

Victoria Denis: 07:11

Sure. A lot of parents of independent school children will approach us when there's any sort of dispute between themselves and the school, such that these do come into the kind of remit of resolution, basically, so, if there was any concern about what Celia was saying, bullying or concerns about negligence the mode that we would usually go after in order to get that kind of resolution is by asking for at least a partial refund of fees for that term or potentially depending on how severe the breaches were, potentially for that whole year and so one recent case that I've had was a child's family came to us because there was about four years of bullying that had gone on without the parents knowing and crucially without the school having notified the parent and the child was on his way out, but we'd strategically advised that the complaint should be raised while he was a student at the school. Otherwise, the complaints procedure wouldn't apply and we wouldn't be able to use that really helpful staged process to seek resolution and in our correspondence to the school, we set out when they ought to have known about the bullying, the effect the bullying had on the child, and importantly, why he was no longer able to attend the school and so in reaching resolution, we not only got a fee waiver, because crucially, fees in lieu of notice are often at least threatened to be enforced by independent schools. So, we did get a waiver for that and then we got an additional compensation award in the form of half of a terms fees refunded to them. So, a positive outlook or a positive outcome for that family and it's often what we're kind of handed with at this kind of stage when the relationship is clearly broken down.

Emma O'Connor: 09:23

Thank you and I know that often in the work that you do, you come against, regulations, local authority rules, sometimes, political education policies as well but where do you see the developments in the particular areas that you're practicing in Celia? What's growing in terms of your caseload?

Celia Whittuck: 09:45

Currently, there's a big increase in, for example, enquiries about AI misuse, whether that be with schools, colleges or universities. So we are dealing with a lot of academic misconduct cases so we're doing a lot of work with students who have been accused of AI misuse and supporting them through the disciplinary process which follows from that and in those circumstances, we are trying to understand the basis on which they have used AI and whether there are any mitigating circumstances and therefore whether it's possible to persuade the university to reduce their sanction. We always have a lot of issues around special educational needs. That is being complicated somewhat at the moment by the government's move towards changing the levels of support which will be provided to children. Many local authorities are telling parents at the moment that those changes have already come into place or are alluding to the fact they have already come into place and they haven't and so at the moment I'm talking to a lot of parents who think that they are not able to still apply for EHCPs and that's just simply not the case.

Emma O'Connor: 11:23

Victoria, what's on your desk at the moment? Where are you seeing the direction of travel in terms of your workload?

Victoria Denis: 11:28

I think the regulatory environment that we're kind of in right now is approaching the free speech intersection with harassment and sexual misconduct in a really interesting way. So, recent cases about how certain political ideologies and philosophical beliefs are intersecting with students' access to their education then has a knock-on effect to how they are treated within the student body and how they're treated by other academics, by their peers and so there's a real interesting crossover between certain kind of protected beliefs and certain protected characteristics in accordance with the Equality Act, as well as, just protecting students and their abilities to have that access to their education, to just freely be able to study.

Victoria Denis: 12:29

So, it's not one that I came into education law anticipating to be a real kind of shape-shifting element, but actually there is a lot going on with harassment and sexual misconduct as well as the free speech area.

Emma O'Connor: 12:46

And when you think about the types of cases that you're involved with now and maybe some that you've been involved with historically, what sorts of solutions and resolution, I guess, do you bring for the clients that you act for, so parents, pupils, students? Celia, what sorts of solutions?

Celia Whittuck: 13:06

I supported a 19-year-old who had very complex needs, who had always been in special schools due to those needs appeal against a local authority decision to place him in a mainstream college, which really did not suit his needs. The family wanted to place him in a residential school, which was very well suited to his needs. The local authority didn't want to pay for it. So I supported the family to appeal the case to the special educational needs and disability tribunal and fortunately, through some very firm submissions made to the local authority, we managed to settle the case with the local authority conceding that the family's choice of placement was indeed the right one. The local authority agreed to fund it and we managed to avoid a fully contested hearing.

Emma O'Connor: 14:06

Do you find that most of your cases end in a resolution or settlement or do you find sometimes you do have to go to court or tribunal?

Celia Whittuck: 14:17

Certainly, in the first instance I will always try a collaborative approach. That's always the best way of course. But it's important to always have an eye to the future and to make clients aware that there's a potential that if the other party, whether that be a school or a university, doesn't cooperate, then there may be a need to take the matter further and what I quite often find is that generally speaking, even if you start proceedings, either in the centre tribunal or in the county court or the high court,

Celia Whittuck: 14:55

Generally speaking, most of our cases do not reach a final contested hearing. At some point, there's usually some resolution, but it's obviously important to go into these cases with clients having their eyes open to the fact that it may have to go that way.

Emma O'Connor: 15:13

Absolutely, and doing what's best for the client and I can imagine very, very emotional circumstances and worrying times, isn't it? When you think about your children and their education and Victoria, the same question for you. What types of resolutions and success stories have you had for your clients?

Victoria Denis: 15:34

I think the most rewarding and immediately gratifying kind of case that we get in higher education is either fitness to study or fitness to practice case whereby we prepare the representations to say either, you know, this student, despite hardship that they might have gone through, is either fit to study or despite an isolated lack of judgment, this student is fit to practice in a regulated sector. Both of those kinds of cases are very immediately rewarding, not obviously just to myself, but to those students because fitness to study and fitness to practice have such a potential of turning someone's life in a pretty bad direction. So we do kind of take a fully robust approach by preparing representations for them and to put their circumstances completely out on the line whilst also raising relevant considerations like disability discrimination or considerations that reasonable adjustments weren't put in place when certain assessments were undertaken about their fitness and in so doing, if we even have to exhaust the whole process, sometimes we don't. Sometimes they see kind of at the first stage that we've put the best case forward and they're persuaded by that. If we do have to go the full length of that proceeding, we often are able to achieve a fresh start or at least a reduction in sanctions, which still allows the student to study or still allows them to proceed in their regulated course and then their regulated profession. So that is always one of my favourites to do and it is very, very gratifying and satisfying to see such a relatively quick turnaround for such a case.

Celia Whittuck: 17:32

And just following on from that, I've had cases where I've successfully supported a client with an academic appeal and for example, they've had their degree classification increased or I had a client who was withdrawn from medical school in her 6th year and it. It turned out it was primarily due to illness and through the academic appeal I was able to get her back onto the course to give her the opportunity to get her medical degree, so those are cases where you can change a person's trajectory, which is really, really heartwarming.

Emma O'Connor: 18:18

So if you are a parent, pupil or a student, how can they find out more about what you do and how you may be able to help?

Celia Whittuck: 18:27

So we have loads of information on the Doyle Clayton website. So if you go to the website, you click on individuals and then click on education law for individuals and there are different sections for the different services that we offer. So there's and their teachers, but for the work that they can ideally, you click on school children and parents or university students, and that takes you to a whole raft of pages about what we do. We also have testimonials on there and blogs, which gives information, helpful information about the types of work we do.

Celia Whittuck: 19:11

And we will also be putting some case summaries on there as well in due course so that you can see the types of work that we do and the success stories we've had.

Emma O'Connor: 19:22

Thank you very much, Celia and Victoria, for joining me today on the podcast, that was really, really helpful. So, education cases can be complex. There's complex law rules and different approaches taken by local authorities and higher education institutions. They're complicated by facts and also the context can be challenging cases can also be stressful and emotional with dealing with children, as we've heard, their education and also some very complex needs. But Doyle Clayton's individual education team is here to help and support you. So as Celia and Victoria have said, do get in touch. To listen to other episodes of DC Talks, then please do subscribe or find us on your usual podcast platform or check out our website. Until I get a chance to speak with you again, thank you very much for listening.