New school provision plans for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
Telford & Wrekin Council is to develop a partnership arrangement between special schools and a small number of mainstream schools to broaden the range of provision for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
A recommendation to develop resource bases in mainstream schools that cater for children with cognition, learning and social communication difficulties, including those with Autism, will be considered for approval by cabinet.
The council’s cabinet – which meets on March 14 – is being told that this development provides an inclusive option which bridges the gap between special and mainstream schools, offering greater choice for parents.
This means children with more complex SEND are educated alongside their mainstream peers.
Over recent months, Telford & Wrekin Council has been focusing on building the resilience and capacity of mainstream schools to meet increasing complexity of need and schools have been responding to this.
In 2017, the Department for Education announced special provision capital funding for local authorities to invest in new places and/or improvements to facilities for pupils with high needs.
Telford & Wrekin Council’s current allocation amounts to £848,837 over three years and the funding is primarily intended to create new places and improve facilities at existing sites.
It can also be used to support the establishment of the units in a small number of mainstream schools and to support the creation of new places for specialist provision.
Local authorities are required to develop and update a plan every year that shows how the funding will be invested in order to release the money.
The report to cabinet is recommending that two mainstream primary schools are identified to work with a special school to operate a partnership model.
It is envisaged that this will start from autumn term 2019 and that a secondary school offering resource provision should open at some stage in the academic year 2019/2020.
It is also recommended that specialist resource provision is commissioned as a satellite of the pupil referral unit at the Linden Centre to meet the increasing needs of children with social, emotional and mental health. They are already operating a “mini school” in Dawley and this will be formalised by being given cabinet approval with the opportunity to expand it as necessary.
The report also says that substantive work may be required to special school environments to cater for children with the highest complexity of special educational needs and disabilities.
Councillor Shirley Reynolds, Telford & Wrekin Council’s cabinet member for Employment, Education and Lifelong Learning, said: “We consulted stakeholders in the summer of last year on possible options to meet the growing demand for specialist provision.
“This identified that there was widespread support within the school community for provision to be provided through resource based units.
“This led to a root and branch review of high needs provision and I am pleased that we have found a way forward to develop more capacity in the system.”
