ABSTRACT
Since the end of the nineteenth century the state has taken upon itself the burden of schooling the whole population. In England and Wales local education authorities and funding authorities are now the vehicles for delivering this service (ss. 13, 14, 16 Education Act 1996). Surprisingly, children’s rights to education are poorly protected in law. The legal duty to ensure that children are educated lies upon the parent of every child of compulsory school age, rather than upon the state (s. 7 Education Act 1996). The reality for nearly all children is that they will receive the education that the local education authority or grant maintained sector choose to provide for them; even in an ‘education market’ providers have decisive powers. It is in the difficult cases that the weak rights that children have to receive an education are most clearly revealed. These difficult cases involve children who have attended school but have been excluded by their headteachers. Exclusions were first regulated by the Education (No. 2) Act 1986. Acts of Parliament under Conservative administrations in 1993, 1996 and 1997 and in 1998, under the Labour government, have marked governments’ responses to the increasing number of excluded pupils and to growing concern over what is happening to them.
