Special Educational Needs centre to open at Lakelands Academy
A Special Educational Needs centre for secondary-age pupils is to open at the Lakelands Academy in Ellesmere in January 2015.
To be named the Kettlemere Centre, it will provide specialist teaching and facilities for up to 24 children whose primary need is communication and interaction.
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.
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.
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 Lakelands Academy was selected as it has an excellent record of supporting pupils with Special Educational Needs, and senior leaders, staff and governors showed great enthusiasm for the project. Careful consideration had been given as to how the centre could become part of the school, so offering mainstream access where appropriate, rather than being a separate facility placed on a mainstream site.”
The new centre will cost around £800,000 and will be funded from Shropshire Council’s capital programme. The cost will be funded in the long-run through the reduction in expensive out-of-county placements.
It is hoped that this model of support will be replicated in other locations within the county in future, enabling Shropshire to offer more appropriate, localised support for pupils with special educational needs.
Further information
The Kettlemere Cenre is designed to be operated as an independent unit, and as such has its own drop-off area and entrance. However, it also links to the main academy building so opportunities are provided to allow integration of the pupils with the rest of the school.
Internally the centre will essentially comprise of four teaching areas, accessed from a central communal space. Apart from the classroom there will be ancillary accommodation such as a multimedia room and therapy room along with an office, meeting room, toilets and storage. The layout and design will incorporate features of other successful SEN Hubs such as The Communications Centre, King Charles School, Kidderminster.
In total the facility will cover 450m² with an additional 190m² external play area. An existing music room will be converted to provide 150m² of the space and the remainder will be formed by the new extension.
