The Claimants are all home tutors and were employed by the Respondent as home tutors for differing periods of time.  Their respective employments all came to an end on 31 December 2015.  During their employment they worked full-time on the terms set out in the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document 2010 and Guidance on School Teachers Pay and Conditions (the "Document") which applied to each of their employments. The Document provided the contractual conditions for the payment of Special Educational Needs allowance. The Claimants worked mainly on a 1-1 basis at the students' homes and there were differing percentages of students with SEN. The Respondent said they did not qualify for the SEN allowance because they did not fall within the definition of paragraph 25.2(d) of the Document - the Claimants brought a claim of breach of contract following the termination of their employment. The ET concluded that the "unit or service" for the purposes of determining whether the claimants had "a greater involvement in the teaching of children with [SEN] than is the normal requirement of teachers throughout… the unit or service" was the whole education authority rather than the home tutoring service. The Tribunal accordingly concluded that all three Claimants fell within the definition of paragraph 25.2(d) of the Document and were therefore entitled to SEN allowance for the relevant periods. The Respondent appealed.

The EAT allowed the appeal. On a proper construction of the Document, and in light of the evidence, the Claimants are not entitled to be paid SEN allowance for the relevant periods because (a) home tutoring was not an analogous setting to a designated special class or unit; and (b) because they did not establish that they had a greater involvement in the teaching of children with SEN than is the normal requirement of teachers throughout the unit or service, when condition (iii) is properly understood and applied to the facts of their case.