Transcript

Senate Member Decision Making Today for Children, Families and Lifelong Learning. We have one substantive item on the agenda today, which is in relation SEN unit at Thames Ditton Infant School. Before we get to that, a couple of procedural items. Firstly, Ditton Infant School, and I'm joined this morning by Katie Kelly-Weller, who is the Education Place Planning Manager, who has prepared the report that, as a local authority, we have a statutory duty to ensure that there are sufficient schools at both primary and secondary level across the county providing education provision, including for those children and young people who have special educational needs and or a disability who have what we call additional needs. Our latest sufficiency modelling projections through to 20 2030 2030, 20, going back to academic years 2018 through to 2021, showing that there has been significant growth in the total number of pupils at Thames Ditton Infant School, and to formalise the nurture class which opened there this September 2024, this academic year, and to create an additional 21 places at this school. It will be for primary school age. It will be for primary school age children who have communication and interaction needs, will have an education, health and care plan, which specifies the specialist provision within the school as an appropriate placement to meet their individual needs. As I've said, the projections are showing us a clear need for this additional specialist provision in the Elmbridge area, alongside provision, specialist provision at other local schools, such as Belfar to home, rather than attend specialist provision at distance, and they will therefore stay connected to their communities. And there are clear financial benefits for the local authority in expanding the number of maintained specialist places and keeping children in maintained units, rather than finding them places in non-maintained specialist schools. I know that a nurture class of 12 spaces open in September 24, and this class will transfer SCN unit from September 2025. A new reception intake will also join the school from September 2025, which has been published for this proposal, in September, and a further statutory notice was published in November. I'm going to go to the consultations. Thank you. So, as you said, the informal consultation ran from the 12th of September to the 25th of October 2024, and of the 20 respondents, 100% of them agreed with the proposal. Thank you, Katie. That's good to hear, and it's good to hear that responses to the consultation were overwhelmingly positive, and that this proposal is welcomed in the local area. So, this meeting and my consideration of the proposal completes the statutory process in accord with the commencement of the proposals, and I do approve the proposal without modification, which is option two in the paper, and therefore the proposal is agreed. Thank you, Katie. Thank you all. I think, having done that, we can close the meeting. Thank you all for attending this morning. Thank you all for attending this morning. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.