New specialist school for children with complex needs to be created
Senior councillors have agreed to increase the number of school places for primary and secondary school-aged children by developing a new specialist school in North Halifax.
Calderdale Council’s cabinet members’ decision will also see dedicated provision for pupils who have social, emotional and mental health issues (SEMH).
The council will use £21m from the Department of Education to create a new school for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in North Halifax.
It will see council land used for an additional campus for Ravenscliffe, maintaining Ravescliffe’s Skircoat Green site but releasing its Spring Hall campus for SEMH pupils.
This option, which also retains the school’s hydrotherapy pool, comes in at a price tag of around £11m to £14m.
It means the £7m to £10m remaining can be used to expand primary special school places at Woodbank School and Highbury School.
The options chosen boil down to getting maximum use for the most number of children with the finances that are available, said cabinet member for children and young people’s services, Coun Adam Wilkinson.
The other option would have been to relocate Ravenscliffe School’s Skircoat Green site to North Halifax, with the school keeping the Spring Hall site and the Skircoat Green site being used for
SEMH students.
Coun Wilkinson (Lab, Sowerby Bridge), answering a question expressing Ravenscliffe’s concerns about the chosen option, said, with a limited budget available, it was the most effective choice.
“This is something parents feel strongly about and the council is trying to address with its available resources,” he said.
The rejected option would leave no funding to address a shortage of places for primary or SEMH pupils, he added.
The chosen plan will also
“allow us to educate children with additional needs in Calderdale and stop sending them to out-of-borough placements,” he said.
“This would reduce the long travel times for our children and would significantly reduce pressures on the high needs funding block, which is currently overspending by nearly £6m, and also the pressures on the special education needs transport budget.”
In the meeting’s public questions segment, Gareth Hunter referenced Ravenscliffe’s concerns, saying there was not enough detail gone into in the briefing papers about the “sheer scale” of funds generated towards Ravenscliffe’s Spring Hall project.
“You’ll be aware of the huge fundraising campaign that was undertaken by the school and its charitable arm of Friends of Ravenscliffe between 2011 and 2018 which generated in excess of £1.2m,” he said.
Along with £400,000 from the school, this £1.6m contribution supplemented the £1.8m capital funding available to the council to construct and equip Spring Hall as its stands today.
“The charitable funds were given expressly by the school friends to provide for Ravenscliffe students, not the local authority as a whole,” he said.
Coun Wilkinson said while the council completely understood the school’s position in relation to Spring Hall, there was no reason to think that Sport England – the source of some of the funding – would want to recall that cash.