Dorset Council has secured £37.5m for the next five years to help deliver a bold and ambitious strategy to provide the best education for all of Dorset’s children and young people with Special Educational Needs or Disability (SEND).
A spokesperson from the council told KeeP 106: “Our bold and ambitious SEND Capital Strategy focuses on creating the best education and support for Dorset’s children and young people with SEND through the:
- Creation of new special schools with fantastic facilities (including the Centre of Excellence, former St Mary’s school)
- Expansion of high-quality provision at Dorset’s existing special schools (including the expansion of Beaucroft School).
- Development of new facilities at existing mainstream schools, such as Inclusion Hubs.
“We aim to build on the capabilities of our mainstream schools to support more children and young people with SEND, which will ensure more children can attend a local school and receive their education in the county they call home.”
Currently some children and young people with SEND must travel a great distance for educational provision, sometimes far from home. This is because there’s not enough specialist provision available in Dorset.
Independent provision costs around £60,000 a year per child, whereas high quality provision at one of Dorset’s own special schools costs around £22,000 a year per child. The SEND Capital Strategy aims to increase local provision and reduce some of these costs in the longer term.
Cllr Andrew Parry, Dorset Council Portfolio Holder for Children, Education and Early Help, said; “Dorset Council is making a big investment in education and support for children with SEND and it’s of huge importance to us. We’ve developed these ambitious plans because the need for more SEND provision is growing fast and we want all our children and young people to have the best possible outcomes – to thrive!
“This bold and ambitious strategy will focus on achieving the best education for all Dorset’s children and young people with SEND, while avoiding the need for a child to travel away from their family and friend networks to receive their education or support.”
The wider SEND Sufficiency programme to invest £37.5m will include the expansion of Inclusion Hubs across Dorset which will be provision attached to mainstream schools. Inclusion Hubs will support children with SEND so that they can access the mainstream classroom, but also allow space to support children when they need more specialist support. This will achieve an expansion of over 100 places over the next 5 years.
In addition, the Council’s roadmap to deliver the programme already includes a scheme to open the Dorset Centre of Excellence – a new school for Dorset to open with an initial 60 additional places in the 2021/22 academic year, with further phasing as it seeks to achieve 280 places in total over the subsequent years.
They will also work towards opening an additional site for Beaucroft Special School – which will bring approximately 75 additional places in 2022/23.
Meanwhile, they are continuing to work with their special school headteachers across Dorset to expand provision where they can and are exploring several schemes to deliver this.
