A consultation is open on the next academic year’s school finance regulations (see the DfE website for details).

The proposed regulations largely provide for the same arrangements as last year, but makes six proposed changes to the:

• Ability of local authorities to carry forward any unspent falling rolls fund or new schools fund;
• Ability of local authorities to use place-based funding for 2 year olds;
• Definition of amalgamated schools;
• Budgets of closed and amalgamated schools;
• Expenditure a local authority can incur from their non-schools education budget; and
• Authorised expenditure in respect of Children and Young People with High Needs.

The deadline for responses is 13 November 2015.

Holly Stout

Many of you will have heard about the government’s recent decision to set up a taskforce to tackle violence against women on campus. (See the government press release here.) This move is timeous or long overdue (depending on your viewpoint) in the light of the accumulating momentum of campaigns by various individuals and organisations to highlight the high incidence of sexual violence/harassment on campus.

The ‘turning of the tide’ (so to speak) came with the publication of the results of the NUS Survey ‘Hidden Marks’ in 2010 which found that a shocking 1 in 7 female students was a victim of sexual assault or violence.  Since then increasing publicity has been given to the issue, in particular by the End Violence Against Women campaign who in February of this year published a government briefing and detailed legal advice from Louise Whitfield and Holly Dustin as to university’s legal obligations under the Human Rights Act 1998 (“HRA”) and the public sector equality duty (“PSED”) in s 149 of the Equality Act 2010 (“EA 2010”). Significant press interest in the issue was perhaps brought to a head in the summer by a Guardian investigation.

On 6 September the government responded with its decision to set up a taskforce, whose brief is to:

• develop a code of practice for institutions to support cultural change
• explore how a kitemark scheme could be developed and awarded to successful institutions
• explore how better to engage with Crime Prevention Officers
• ensure best use of the existing complaints mechanisms such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and, for students, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator
• encourage institutions to ensure that the right links are in place with existing local activity, including through the Home Office Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy

This is welcome news, both for those affected by sexual violence on campus, and for universities. Until now, the only specific guidance to universities on dealing with cases of sexual violence had been the 1994 report by Graham Zellick to the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (not available on the web). This report, which followed what was widely perceived as mishandling of a rape allegation by a university (the details of which are shrouded in the mists of internet time), recommended that universities should normally leave the investigation of sexual violence to the police, other than in exceptional circumstances.

A judicial review earlier this year in which I represented Oxford University (see here for details and contemporaneous press reports) raised the question of the compatibility of Zellick’s recommendations with modern discrimination law, in particular with the obligations that universities may owe under the EA 2010 to protect students from harassment by ‘third parties’ (such as other students) and to deal appropriately with complaints of harassment so as not themselves to create, or contribute to the creation, of an environment that is ‘intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive’ (compare, in the employment sphere, Norouzi v Sheffield City Council [2011] IRLR 897).

It will be interesting to see whether the taskforce tackles the Zellick Report ‘head on’. Whether or not it does, however, it seems likely that the taskforce’s Report will supercede Zellick and provide welcome guidance to Universities on handling these difficult issues.

In the meantime, this year’s hapless freshers happily have more immediate support in the form of Lady Gaga’s latest release.

Holly Stout

The SEN reforms which came into force on 1 September 2014 are well-known.  However, this regime does not apply to anyone who is detained in the criminal justice system.  Instead, parallel but separate provision is made for “detained persons”, i.e. those aged 18 or under (but not those aged 19-25) who are subject to a detention order and detained in relevant youth accommodation.

That regime, which came into force on 1 April 2015, is set out in sections 70-75 of the Children and Families Act 2014, the Special Educational Needs and Disability (Detained Persons) Regulations 2015 and the revised version of the Code of Practice.

The importance of these new provisions is clear.  The Explanatory Memorandum to the 2015 Regulations refers to 2010 research which showed that 18% of detained persons had a statement of special educational needs (compared to approximately 3% of under-19s overall) and over 60% had speech, language and communication needs.

The Explanatory Memorandum also acknowledged that these needs have frequently gone unmet due to the lack of awareness and lack of clearly defined responsibilities, and the stated aim is to provide a new approach to remedy this.

However, the way the relevant provisions are spread over the Act, the regulations and the Code of Practice does not always make it easy to understand them.  To try and help with this I have drafted a note which attempts to summarise this new regime.  It can be viewed or downloaded here.

I hope the note is of use and interest and would welcome any comments or feedback.

Paul Greatorex