TM v London Borough of Hounslow [2009] EWCA Civ 859, [2009] All ER (D) 17 (Sep)
It was insufficient for a local education authority simply to ask whether a particular school could meet a child’s statement of special education needs and then, if it found the answer to that question to be “yes”, to treat the effect of s 319 of the Education Act 1996 as requiring that the school be named.
The question which the authority had to address was whether it could be satisfied that it would be inappropriate for the special education provisions of the particular child to be made in school or not.
In answering that question, it was not enough to ask whether the school “can” meet the statement of needs. The authority had to take into account all the circumstances of the case in hand, including the parents’ wishes.
