Anyone won an exclusion discrimination case?

[janejones]

Would appreciate any advice.I am debating whether to lodge a case but worried about costs and the school lying or fabricating evidence(have a history of this). Has anyone had a successful result? What in your case constituted 'reasonable' adjustments?

Do you mean tribunal?

Yes, tribunal

I just started a thread as we found out today we won our disability discrimination case. In our case the lack of reasonable adjustments was inadequate support/mentoring, inadequate monitoring and review and inadequate liasion with us. The tribunal said it prevented DS from accessing the curriculum in line with his peers and therefore he was treated unfavourably because of his disability.

We haven't incurred legal costs - we had minimal advice from IPSEA but they couldn't 'take on' our case. Costs were time, sleep and sanity! (And rather a lot of printing documents). I think costs are only very rarely awarded against the 'losing side'.

Glad to say that we didn't have an issue with the school lying or fabricating evidence. They seemed pretty confident that the Tribunal would find in their favour and didn't submit much at all.

Thanks. The school are adamant they did what they could however staff provocation led to the exclusion. Don't know how much weight that would carry at tribunal though.

At the hearing the tribunal seemed keen for us to say what reasonable adjustments the School should have made AND to say (it semed more like 'prove') that such adjustments would have made a difference. So I think you would need to say what the school should have done in that particular situation and why that would have led to a different response from your DS/DD - and possibly be able to say that before when 'x' strategy has been used you can show it led to 'y' outcome.

In our case, we argued that if the School had told us the difficulties DS was having, we would have got support from a private tutor. And we were then able to say that subsequently when we knew of DS's difficulties and employed a tutor, it did enable him to make progress.

It is hard - we really didn't know which way our tribunal would go because it is hard to judge what the panel will consider 'reasonable'.

janejones, is this of any use to you?
nas-education-update.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/bpp-school-exclusions-project-offers.html?m=1

Hi there Jane Jones
I have recently posted asking something similar to you although we have actually started tribunal proceedings and I was wanting to know what my chances were. Have you spoke to IPSEA? It can be difficult to get through on their helpline but in my case when I eventually did the volunteer I spoke to was lovely and couldnt quite believe how school were treating my son - she was a retired Head Teacher. She then passed my case onto the legal team to discuss further and quite a few weeks later I received a telephone call from Craig (he is a recently qualified barrister but has to do 12 months pupilage before he can officially call himself that so hence why he is volunterring for IPSEA).

Anyway he has been amazing I speak to him on average once a week as it is a very time consuming process even with his help as I have had to send copies of all letters and correspondance to/from school and then do a witnes statement of everything that has happened since the problems started 18 months ago and also obtain evidence reports from various professionals.
My problem is different to yours and involves school discriminating against my son because of his disability (ADHD) but it is definately worth a shot ringing IPSEA.

We have a hearing date scheduled in May but have just received a letter from the schools solicitor telling us they still dont believe they are discriminating against my ds but would I like to meet them along with the IPSEA volunteer to discuss a way forward (i.e them making the reasonable adjustments I keep asking for).
My volunteer says this is a good sign as it shows they are reluctant to take things to the hearing and he is quite positive that we would get a good result but I do have days when I doubt this and it has been physically, mentally and emotionally draining but I just want it all to end and school to admit they are wrong and put it right.

We are going to agree to meet but the hearing date will not be cancelled until they agree to put in the adjustments we need and we have seen them implemented. From past experience I cant see this happening but if it does progress to the tribunal at least this shows we were willing to discuss with them.
You should definately speak to IPSEA and find out where you stand. They have been a godsend to us.

Well done pennetone on your victory you must be so relieved.