Special needs school in Ham in line for special upgrade

6:00am Thursday 24th January 2013 in News By Clare Buchanan

Parents of children with special educational needs (SEN) could have purpose built facilities when a special needs school expands on to the site of three mainstream counterparts.

Plans include developing and relocating at Strathmore School in Ham, by creating purpose-built facilities co-located on the sites of Russell Primary School and Grey Court School.

The consultation also proposes a third location - a new SEN school located on the Clifden Road site in Twickenham.

Councillor Christine Percival, cabinet member for education, said: “By developing the special school provision alongside our mainstream schools, we can increase the extent to which children with disabilities and learning difficulties can access the whole curriculum and extended school activities.

“At the same time they will have a specially designed facility with remodelled, high quality buildings to ensure that their needs are addressed.”

Interested parties can have their say on the council’s website and are invited to a public meeting on February 11 at Ham Youth Centre at 6pm.

Comments(5)

Sparkythecat says...
2:15pm Thu 24 Jan 13

Does this mean that the proposed SEN facility on the Clifden site will be solely for children of our Roman Catholic friends?

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Querty says...
2:40pm Mon 4 Feb 13

Whilst there is a strong case for greater investment in special education in the Borough, this proposal as it currently stands involves the sale of significant amounts of land on the Strathmore and Russell School sites. This has generated significant concern and opposition from parents and residents. It would be good to see these views reflected in the future editions. Readers wishing to learn more should search for 'don't sell school land petersham'. Thank you

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RichardMorris says...
2:54pm Mon 4 Feb 13

The plans outlined by the council involve selling Strathmore School and the whole of the Infants at the Russell School to developers, reducing the recreational space for all the children, and putting the 2 schools in Petersham on a much smaller. We would like to see better facilities for both sets of schools - but selling school land is not the answer. The Council should be ashamed that this is their only answer - and must think again

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Tina Bucklow says...
10:51pm Tue 5 Feb 13

This article is an extremely positive slant on what is a drastic and damaging proposal which includes plans to sell off school land that is surrounded by conservation areas to developers and places more school pupils in less play space including those that have special needs. The area is already congested and the Russsell School is already co-located with Strathmore school so why can't a way forward be found to fund these proposals so that it doesn't make it necessary to sell school land. Please please say no to these plans at the councils website sen(underscore)consu
ltation.

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Elizabeth May says...
6:42pm Wed 6 Feb 13

The article is pure PR for the council's very unpopular proposals to fund a school build by selling school land. There is no mention here of the plan to sell the old Strathmore site or a significant amount of Russell school land with a huge loss of playing fields for Russell School children. I personally find these plans absolutely abhorrent.

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