Scottish Human Rights Law Group

The Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal, that the requirement to qualify for admission at a Jewish faith school that the Respondent’s mother had to be Jewish, by descent or by conversion, was a test of ethnicity which contravened section 1 of the Race Relations Act 1976.
A summary of the Judgment can be found here.
The full …

by John McKendrick
Advocate and Barrister
 
This short paper presents an update on human rights decisions from a number of different jurisdictions in the field of education law. 
The primary focus relates to the following areas of regulation:
school uniforms;
exclusion from school;
discriminatory treatment.

Webster was a white pupil who had been injured on school grounds by an Asian fellow pupil. He and others were suing the school for negligence, claiming that they had allowed racial tensions to develop.

 
An objection was made to the Article 6 compatibility of the provisions of Section 35 of the Education Scotland Act 1980 which made it an offence for a parent to fail to ensure that their child attended school regularly.
The sheriff held that if section 35(1) of the 1980 Act were interpreted as imposing an offence of strict liability on the …

The mother of a severely disabled child made an out of area placing request. The authority refused her request, which was then referred to the Additional Support Needs Tribunal on appeal. The tribunal determined that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the reference. The mother’s appeal to the Outer House was refused. The Lord Ordinary held that, having regard …