Disability discrimination

If you think your child has been discriminated against because of their epilepsy, you normally need to make the complaint within six months of the discrimination happening. Most disability discrimination claims go to SENDIST. Appeals about admission to, or permanent exclusion from, maintained schools go to the relevant panel

• More information about appeals

What to do if you think your child has been discriminated against:

• Talk to the head teacher. Tell them that you feel the school has discriminated against your child. Explain what the school could do to remedy the discrimination, for example including your child in an activity that they have been excluded from. You could describe any reasonable steps the school could take to prevent discrimination from happening again, for example providing training for staff. Bear in mind that these steps must be reasonable: if preventing the discrimination would have been very costly or difficult for the school, it is likely that the school was not breaking the law by discriminating. When you are considering asking the school to make reasonable adjustments, be open minded about possible solutions.
  Example: if a child in a wheelchair does not have full access to the curriculum because classrooms for some subjects are upstairs in several different buildings, it would not be “reasonable” to expect the school to install lifts. But moving the teachers and lessons, so that the pupil and their peers can have full access to the curriculum on the ground floor is likely to be reasonable.
• If the school does not stop discriminating or does not remedy the situation, ask to use its formal complaints procedure.
• Write to the school governors to explain your concerns.
• If the school is still discriminating or has not addressed the original problem, you can make a formal claim of discrimination to SENDIST. You can contact the Equality and Human Rights Commission in England, Scotland and Wales or the Equality Commission in Northern Ireland to find out whether they feel that you have grounds for a claim. You may also seek conflict resolution at the same time.

• Epilepsy awareness project for primary schools