Specialist Somerset school delayed until at least 2024
It's because of bad Ofsted results of the trust originally tasked with running it
A new specialist school near the A303 in Somerset won’t open its doors until the autumn of 2024 following bad Ofsted results at the trust tasked with running it.
Somerset County Council successfully applied to the Department for Education (DfE) in 2019 to open a new school near the village of Ash which would provide space for 120 pupils with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND).
The school, which has been named Hill View Academy, was granted planning permission in November 2022 and is currently being constructed directly by the DfE.
But Somerset Council has now revealed that the school will not open until September 2024 at the earliest after the Wave multi-academy trust (MAT) was served with warning notices by the government.
In the meantime, SEND pupils will have to be taught in mainstream schools or be placed in independent facilities – at an anticipated cost of more than £1m per term.
The delay was confirmed in a briefing note to unitary councillors, seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
The new free school (i.e. a new school which is an academy) is designed to cater for up to 120 pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), including those with speech, language and communication difficulties.
Pupils will be able to study a range of subjects up to Key Stage 4, working towards either GCSEs or vocational qualifications.
The DfE originally expected that the school would open in September 2022 with 64 pupils in its first intake – but this was pushed back to January 2023 following issues in the design and planning processes.
The DfE subsequently pushed the opening date back further to September 2023, informing Somerset County Council in September 2021 that the DfE’s chosen contractor to build the school “had its contract terminated”.
The school was further delayed until January 2024 after the DfE failed to secure another contractor until January 2022.
The most recent problems began in December 2022, when the Wave MAT (which runs several SEND schools in Devon and Cornwall) was issued with a “termination warning notice” after one of its academies – Penwith Alternative Provision Academy in Penzance – was judged ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted inspectors.
This was compounded by a second ‘inadequate’ rating for the same trust in March, with a negative report being levelled at the River Dart Academy in Shinner’s Bridge, near Dartington.
It took the DfE until May to decide that the Wave MAT “will not be the sponsor” for the new Hill View Academy.
With a new sponsor needing to be found for the academy, the opening date has now been pushed back to September 2024 – assuming that there are no further complications.
The council confirmed that the school is being delivered by the DfE directly, rather than forming part of its own capital programme (the latest version of which was approved in February as part of its annual budget).
It also confirmed that it “does not have sufficient specialist provision” for SEND pupils in its state-maintained schools to make up the difference until the new academy can open.
The Sky Academy in Taunton currently only has capacity for around 70 pupils – and is currently being brokered a new sponsor after it was judged to be ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted in May 2022.
The council will be supporting SEND pupils through the following measures:
Agreeing additional funding packages for mainstream schools to be able to commission additional support or alternative provision
Using pupil referral units (PRUs) for children with education and health care plans (EHCPs)
Identifying placements in independent non-maintained special (INMS) schools
A spokesman said: “These approaches have implications for children, whereby provision may not be as complete or good as would be expected from a maintained special school.
“There are also financial implications – in particular for INMS schools which can cost £40,000 per year per child more than an equivalent place in a state-maintained setting.
“Although it is unlikely that the new school would take all 120 pupils at its opening, the lack of these places in the school system and the resulting use of INMS places indicates avoidable spend of approximately £1.2m for every term that the school’s opening is delayed.”