The Court of Appeal held that Redbridge was entitled to operate a decentralised system of specialist support, under which teaching assistants are employed directly by schools.
This case concerned a 13 year old girl who is blind and partially deaf and requires a high level of support at her mainstream school in the London Borough of Redbridge. ZK challenged Redbridge’s refusal to adopt a ‘centralised’ model of support, whereby the local authority recruits and employs specialist educational support teachers who are seconded to mainstream schools, arguing that the existing ‘decentralised’ model (in which the school employs a specialist teaching assistant if and when it has a child attending with that particular need) was irrational and unlawful.