COMMENTARY ON SECTIONS Sections 21 – 39 amend, in most cases by inserting new sections, the Learning and Skills Act 2000 Section 26 Pupils’ choices of local curriculum courses (section 33E of the Learning and Skills Act 2000)
77.This section will operate in relation to children in Key Stage 4. It is during that stage that they will need to make choices about the courses they wish to follow when they cease to be of compulsory school age at the end of Key Stage 4.
78.Subsection (1) sets out the rights of pupils to elect to follow a course or courses from the relevant local curriculum for that pupil. These rights may, however, be limited by regulations made by the Welsh Ministers under subsection (3).
79.Subsection (2) sets out the period of time during which any student’s entitlement exists. Any entitlement ceases once a person attains the age of nineteen. This does not mean that such a person must cease following a course of study upon attaining nineteen, merely that s/he no longer has an enforceable statutory entitlement to continue to follow the course.
80.Subsection (3) enables regulations to be made by the Welsh Ministers which may, for example, specify the maximum number of courses the pupil may choose from the whole local curriculum, the maximum aggregate ‘points’ of the courses that may be chosen and the period during which those choices should be made. It may be necessary to restrict the period during which choices may be made in order that, subsequently, the agencies involved have sufficient time to make the necessary preparations for delivering the chosen courses of study (which may be delivered by a school or institution other than the one attended when choices are made).
81.Subsection (4) defines the “relevant local curriculum” for a pupil. It is the local curriculum designated in respect of the pupil’s relevant school or institution under section 33C of the Learning and Skills Act 2000 or, where there is a single local curriculum for the LEA in which the pupil’s school or institution is situated, that curriculum.