# Education Act 1996, Section 321: General duty of local authority towards children for whom they are responsible.

Extent: E+W

(1) A local authority shall exercise their powers with a view to securing that, of the children for whom they are responsible, they identify those to whom subsection (2) below applies.
(2) This subsection applies to a child if—
(a) he has special educational needs, and
(b) it is necessary for the authority to determine the special educational provision which any learning difficulty he may have calls for.
(3) For the purposes of this Part a local authority are responsible for a child if he is in their area and—
(a) he is a registered pupil at a maintained school or maintained nursery school ,
(b) education is provided for him at a school which is not a maintained school or maintained nursery school but is so provided at the expense of the authority,
(c) he does not come within paragraph (a) or (b) above but is a registered pupil at a school and has been brought to the authority’s attention as having (or probably having) special educational needs, or
(d) he is not a registered pupil at a school but is not under the age of two or over compulsory school age and has been brought to their attention as having (or probably having) special educational needs.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/56/section/321 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/education-act-1996/section-321
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.