NEXT week, Liverpool City Council’s cabinet is set to discuss the next steps for revised plans to increase school places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.
Earlier this year, an informal consultation was held into a set of proposals to move and expand special schools in order to increase the number of places available to meet the needs of children and young people in Liverpool with SEND.
Now, in response to the feedback received from parents, governors, schools and other stakeholders, changes have been made and a new set of proposals has been developed. These proposals will be presented to cabinet on 18 November and approval is being sought to conduct feasibility work into these plans prior to a full consultation early in the new year.
The new proposals are to:
- Create Bank View South, a satellite of Bank View High School, at Parklands
Bank View School will remain at its site in Fazakerley but open a new site, with extra space at Parklands for children with complex needs. This will minimise the disruption to children who are already taught in Bank View. - Create a satellite for Palmerston School on the former Palmerston site
Re-open part of the former Palmerston School building, which was closed when the new school building was opened, to be used for pupils with severe/profound and multiple learning difficulties. - Identify land for a new site for Princes Primary school
Building a new school will enable new facilities to be developed for children who have severe and complex needs. - Relocate New Heights KS2 from Mill Road to a former school building on Naylorsfield Drive and refurbish and extend the Mill Road site to relocate New Heights KS4 from Parklands.
Redbridge High School, which had previously been proposed to move to the Bank View site, will remain in its current location.
Liverpool has seen a 46 per cent increase in pupils with education and health care plans since 2019. The rise in numbers means that sometimes children are placed out of city school or in school in the independent non-maintained sector.
Cllr Tomas Logan, cabinet member for education and skills said:
“In Liverpool, there is a pressing need to increase the number of school places for children and young people with SEND and we are reaching a point where we are not able to offer the range of school places that children, young people and their parents deserve.
“The informal consultation we ran from March to May was incredibly useful and we want to thank parents, governors and schools for their input. Their feedback has enabled us to develop a set of proposals which we feel will not only give us the extra SEND places we need from September 2023 but will also allow us to put a sustainable plan in place which will address the demand for SEND places over the coming years.”
“If cabinet approves the report we can then complete detailed feasibility and design work to bring these ideas to life which will then be put to a formal consultation in the new year.”