Pupils' rights and schools' responsibilities

This subtopic focuses on pupil’s additional rights at school and schools’ further responsibilities towards their students on top of the obligations imposed on them as covered in the subtopic School organisation and regulations. See: School organisation and regulation—overview.

Pupil’s rights at school

The main rights that a child has in school are:

•
the right to an education, and
•
the right to receive the level of care and protection which a reasonable parent would give

The first one is recognised in statute and the second in common law.

The right to an education is, strictly speaking, the right not to be denied the right to education. There are no useful quality criteria against which to measure the availability of this right, therefore it is very hard to show a breach of this right, unless education is denied to a child completely, typically in the context of a homeless

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