Special needs site to open at Ellesmere school
An £800,000 special needs centre at a school in Shropshire – the first of its kind in the county – has been approved and will open in the new year.
Plans for the Special Educational Needs (SEN) hub at Lakelands Academy in Ellesmere were submitted in May by Shropshire Council. The scheme has been given the go-ahead and will create 13 full-time jobs.
To be named the Kettlemere Centre, it will provide specialist teaching and facilities for up to 24 secondary school age children whose primary need is communication and interaction or who have Autistic Spectrum Disorder.
Work is set to begin this July and be completed by December, ready to welcome the first pupils at the start of the spring term in January 2015.
It follows an exercise in which Shropshire Council invited the county's secondary schools to express their interest in hosting a specialist hub, and Lakelands Academy was selected.
The Kettlemere Centre is designed to be operated as an independent unit, and as such has its own drop-off area and entrance. However, it will also link to the main academy building so opportunities are provided to allow integration of the pupils with the rest of the school.
Benefits
The centre will comprise of four teaching areas which will be accessed from a central communal space. There will be ancillary accommodation such as a multimedia room and therapy room along with an office, meeting room, toilets and storage as well as a new external play area.
Ann Hartley, Shropshire Council's cabinet member for children's services – transformation and safeguarding, and local Shropshire Councillor for Ellesmere Urban, said: "Shropshire has very limited specialist teaching provision to support pupils with communications and interaction difficulties, and it is an area of special needs with significantly increasing numbers.
"Currently, these children often have to be placed out of county or travel considerable distances to access suitable provision.
"This new centre will offer a number of benefits. It will improve localised provision for children within the communities in which they live, helping to meet their needs while reducing the significant cost to the council of placing pupils in costly out-of-county provision. This means that children can go to schools close to their friends and family, and the council will save a great deal of money."
The new centre will cost around £800,000 and will be funded from Shropshire Council's capital programme.
