New special school for children with autism will save council millions

Rochdale is to get a new special school so youngsters with autism will not have to go outside of the borough for their education.

The government has given council bosses the green-light to go out to tender for the school, which will create 75 secondary and further education places.

It is understood it will be built next to Heywood Sports Village and cater for pupils aged between 11 and 19.

As well as being welcome news for youngsters with autistic spectrum conditions (ASC) and their families, it will also ease the strain on Rochdale Council’s purse-strings.

The council is facing a £6m overspend on children’s services this year – in no small part due to the amount it has to spend on out-of-borough places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Without a new school forecasts suggest 105 secondary and further education pupils would have to be educated outside Rochdale by 2022 – rising to 175 by 2026 should current trends continue.

Last year government figures revealed that Rochdale had the highest percentage of autistic pupils in mainstream schools in England -19.5 per cent compared to a national average of 7.3pc.

And those pupils are struggling to adjust in the borough’s increasingly crowded schools – with exclusions and home-schooling both markedly on the rise.

A council document states that ‘extra capacity is not optional, it is essential’.

It adds: “The creation of this new school will ensure that Rochdale children are educated within their community.

“The school will have strong links with Rochdale mainstream schools and will allow timely re-integration of pupils into such settings, where appropriate, and will enable a greater range of GCSE equivalent qualifications to be accessed.”

Cabinet member for children’s services, Councillor Kieran Heakin told a cabinet meeting that the school would bring huge benefits.

He said: “If we have our own special school in Rochdale it’s going to save us several million pounds a year, because we will have children in our school in Rochdale that we’re not sending outside of the town.”

And speaking outside of the meeting he said he was ‘absolutely delighted’ the Department for Education had given Rochdale the go-ahead for the school.

He said: “We have now got to nominate a provider for it, we are on our way.”

The school is expected to be ready in 2020 or 2021 and – with a new unit for younger children due to open at Shawclough Primary School this September – it will further boost provision for children with autistic spectrum condition in the borough.

And Councillor Heakin – says that it will ‘without any doubt’ improve the quality of life for the youngsters who go there.

“It will be a purpose-built school. We have learned all the time how we need to get the building to meet the needs of the children that are in it,” he said.

“It will also keep them nearer to home and nearer to their parents which is good for the parents as well. It’s good news really.”

Councillor Heakin added that, in the past, schools had been poorly designed resulting in ‘cloakrooms with 30 pegs but nowhere for pupils to put their PE kit or lunchboxes’.

He said: “It’s about time architects started listening to practitioners in education. We will be consulted at every stage to make sure it’s fit for purpose.”

Councillor Heakin, who estimates the school will save the council around £5m per year once the new school is open, continued: “We know where it’s going to go. There will be sufficient car-parking arrangement and it means children will be closer to home and will also help bring down transport costs.

“At the moment to send someone to a school that’s not in Rochdale costs us a lot of money, that’s why it’s so expensive.”

As with all new schools, this has be a free-school run by a trust or another type of private provider.

The deadline for interested parties to submit applications is September 30.

Nick Statham, Local Democracy Reporter