Have recently represented in R2R case where claimant was Portugese national with two children. A fairly long story but eventually she claimed IS after stopping work due to separation from partner and child care problems. She was refused IS and held not to have R2R.

Children were below schoolage but one had commenced Nursery education.

We appealed and argued that she had R2R conferred on her by children and used Bambaust arguing that this referred to general education and that this covered nursery education. After several adjourned hearings a Chair finally concluded that she did have R2R and that nursery education is general education.

DWP argued that nursery education was not compulsory and in an earlier Tribunal there was some debate around what actually goes on in a Nursery.

Our arguments ran around dictionary definitions of education and also on Government Policy. There are several documents from Central Government and for our case Scottish Executive which cover pre-school years - one of which uses the phrase 'educare' (yuk!) and there was also a curriculum for 3-4 year olds on Scotland.

The DWP were looking at challenging decision but we have just had word that this will now not be happening.