Ambitious plans to create a new special school for around 280 pupils and a leading national centre of excellence, near Shaftesbury, will be decided later this month.
Councillors will meet on 29 April to consider plans to use the former St Mary’s site to deliver high quality education for Dorset children and young people with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) and reduce future costs.
Dorset Council’s Cabinet will rule on the future of the important site after carefully considering the views of local people. The council heard feedback from local people and groups and an overwhelming 92 per cent of the 1,427 people who took part in the consultation said it should continue to be used for education.
Creating a new special school would save money in the long term. Needs are growing in Dorset and our special schools are at capacity.
This means more than 250 Dorset children have to be sent away to independent special schools – at a cost of around £14 million a year. This is because it costs around £60,000 per child, per year for independent provision, compared to around £22,000 for high quality provision at one of Dorset’s own excellent special schools.
The 55-acre site, which has extensive educational facilities, was bought earlier this year after Dorset Council spotted its potential.
If approved the new school could be at the heart of a new centre of excellence on the site, with complementary facilities for vulnerable children, young people and adults. The council’s ambition is also to create a leading learning environment where professionals from across the region, and possibly nationally, can come together to learn, research and improve their practice. The centre could further be used to provide short breaks and respite care for vulnerable children and adults, as well as great facilities for our Dorset children in care and our care leavers.
Cllr Andrew Parry, Dorset Council Portfolio holder for Children, Education and Early Help, said; “The plans we are considering are very ambitious. We have listened very carefully to local people’s feedback. We know the overwhelming majority of people want to see St Mary’s continue to be used for education. Thank you to everyone who shared their views.
“In Dorset we are invested in our children and young people with SEND. Cabinet will meet to make a decision, and I believe that St Mary’s can be used to provide high quality education for Dorset pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. We want nothing less than to make Dorset the very best place to grow-up, so children and adults thrive.
“If these plans get the go-ahead they will also save money in the future. St Mary’s has wonderful facilities and there is no doubt that it would have cost a great deal more and taken several years, to build such an amazing facility from scratch.”
If you would like to keep up to date with the project please sign-up for our St Mary’s Shaftesbury update here.
Being a driver in the past, for Dorset County Council, transporting the elderly citizens and special needs groups to their schools and day centres, one of the most moving experiences was passenger assistant with the same group. The post was to transport children, one being a permanent wheel chair, deaf, dumb, blind and autistic child. His school was in Branscombe , and on arriving, I was absolutely staggered at the number of children arriving from Winchester, Southampton and Weymouth and everywhere in between. There were so many severe cases with far afield transport alone closing a fortune. St Marys, brilliant.
Shorter journeys for the users, lower costs for DCC. All excellent, and the rest of us are lucky for what we having seen the extent of the need. It seems that swimming is one excellent therapy.
Please consider the possibility of allowing local tax payers and residents to use the facilities as well. It is a large school with excellent sports and academic opportunities which could be scheduled alongside the SEND requirements.
Excellent idea!!!
Having seen this building on television it looks as though it is worth preserving. This can be achieved by the council and at the same time provide much needed facilities
As a mother of a deaf child we are looking at provision inside a deaf specialist school that teaches bilingualism . All teachers are fully qualified teachers of the deaf and all the children are deaf allowing my daughter to have friends who are her peers in every sense of the word and not just got special educational needs but very different needs from my daughter. Can this school teach BSL to all students (blind people can learn BSL) and can full gcse and a levels also be included so that the school is fully offering a mainstream education within a language that is easy to understand and his her and most deaf children’s first language as well as a safe setting for disabled children. Not just turn it into a glorified play care where yes the children are safe and occupied during working hours so parents can have a break and go to work, but actually end up teaching little of use other than life skills. Otherwise what will happen is children like my daughter will loose out. She is highly intelligent and social and wants to be a vet. If this school does not actually teach high levels of education using bilingual methods deaf students will still be seriously disadvantaged