Education Law Experts was established by Sarah Woosey and Beth Holbrook. They are two skilled and accomplished education lawyers who are passionate about assisting families with education disputes, particularly those involving special educational needs. Beth and Sarah are non-practising solicitors offering specialist, high quality advice on all aspects of education law and related social care issues. Later, the team was expanded to include Emily Toyne, as a Specialist Education Law Advocate.
The team have extensive experience of conducting successful cases in the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SEND) and appeals to the Upper Tribunal. Over the past 25 years, they have secured many high-value independent specialist school placements for children with special educational needs, including residential provision.
The team also have considerable experience in other areas of education law, such as school admissions, exclusions, school complaints, discrimination, judicial review and further and higher education disputes.
Between them, Education Law Experts have over 50 years of experience in education law.
Although Beth and Sarah both qualified as solicitors, they are now running Education Law Experts Ltd as non-practising solicitors, and the business is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. This enables Education Law Experts to offer their services in a more flexible way and at a lower cost than most law firms. The team are committed to ensuring that they support clients in the most cost-effective way, and their lower overheads enable them to do this.
Education Law Experts provide pragmatic and straightforward advice. The team are robust in dealings with local authorities and will fight your corner with passion and tenacity. We will guide you through what can be a difficult process with empathy and integrity to achieve a solution that is right for you. We work hard to reach solutions through a mixture of negotiation, mediation and appeals.
We use our experience and detailed knowledge of the law to deliver clear and straightforward advice to achieve practical solutions for clients whilst also being completely honest in our assessment of the chances of success.
We offer advice on school exclusions and appeals including representation at disciplinary committee and Independent Review Panel hearings.
We advise on school admissions and assist with admissions appeals. We can represent you at an admissions appeal hearing if required.
We assist with complaints against schools, colleges, any other education institutions. We also help with complaints against local authorities, including complaints to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
We are specialists in disability discrimination. We can assist with claims to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal, but not in County Court cases.
We assist students with complaints and internal appeals, including complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator.
We advise on local authority statutory duties and will enter into pre-action correspondence where there has been a breach. If this is not successful, then we can refer you to an appropriate firm of solicitors should you wish to pursue an application for judicial review.
We offer a free 20-minute telephone consultation with one of our experts for many cases. This can be requested by completing this form.
We cannot consider paperwork as part of this consultation.
Please note that we do not hold a legal aid contract. If you think you may be eligible for legal aid, you can check your eligibility here and can search for a firm who holds a legal aid contract here.
If, following the free telephone consultation, you wish to instruct us for advice, support, guidance or representation then our work is charged according to the time we spend on your case. All the work we carry out is charged at the same rate, irrespective of the nature of the work or who is carrying it out.
We will be able to give you a tailored estimate of the time required to deal with your case as part of our initial consultation and provide a written estimate after the call.
In some cases it may be possible to offer fixed fee initial advice in order to advise on your options and next steps if these are not immediately apparent during the free telephone consultation. If we consider this to be appropriate and cost efficient for you, we will offer this as a first step. This includes consideration of relevant paperwork and provision of written advice.
Our advice will include: