Thread by @exclusionlawyer

Bit of a thread here (13 parts no less!):

A while back I called education in the UK a second-rate right, which is probably a very emotive, quite unhelpful way of putting it.

But #schoolexclusion challenges are strange because they do everything they can to earn this title.

The feel very futile because each stage is flawed. The first stage is a hearing with the school's governors acting as arbitrators, theoretically independent. Obviously, this is flawed because they cannot be truly independent, even with all the goodwill in the world.

Governors say they feel under pressure to support the headteacher, and some say they have ruined a relationship with a headteacher by overturning an exclusion. Even the national governors' association says it's not right for them to have this kind of management-style oversight.

The second stage is the independent review panels, who can find an exclusion unlawful, but can't do anything about it. They can only send the decision back to the governors mentioned above, and that's it. Obviously, the governors can just ignore the independent panels.

A while ago, a family tried to challenge this comically flawed system in the case: R v IRP for Tom Hood School. They said that article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees a right to a fair trial in exclusions. Victory could have opened the door to a fix.

But they lost, the Court said that exclusions do not invoke article 6 rights because they do not concern the determination of a civil right. What they meant by this is that whilst you have the right to an education, you don't have the right to education at a particular school.

Therefore, as long as you are educated post exclusion, there's no reason for the courts to guarantee fair process and access to justice. Obviously, this decision was deeply flawed. Firstly, education post-exclusion is not guaranteed, and certainly not at the same quality.

Secondly, to say to a young person, "you've got a school haven't you, what are you complaining about?" when, for them, exclusion may still mean the world being turned upside-down around them, is dismissing much of what a school should actually be.

This decision sets the bar so low for the right to education to make it basically meaningless.

It means: a few hours' tutoring a week in a library? Fine.

Being placed in an alternative provision where you are being criminally exploited? no problem.

Segregated because of a disability, your ethnicity or academic capacity? Sure thing!

All of these things are fine, even where the exclusion that caused it is found to be unlawful.

Most of all, though, this decision says that young people have no voice in their own schooling. They don't have the right to defend themselves against accusations, they don't get the right to fight for a place in a school where their friends, family and community are.

It says that good schooling is just a privilege, bestowed by the adult-folk that can be withdrawn in the blink of an eye, without oversight, without consequence and without justice.

So yes, we have a right to education in this country. It's just that right sets the bar so low, that a 7-year-old child receiving 5 hours a week from a tutor in a library is considered to be having that right fulfilled (true story). It's a second-rate right.