Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council: Seeking proposals to establish a Special Free School March 2019 1 SECTION ONE: OVERVIEW 1. Summary The Department for Education (DfE) is working collaboratively with selected Local Authorities to establish new schools that fit within the local authorities’ strategies for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and those requiring alternative provision. This opportunity is intended to identify and meet untapped demand for special and alternative provision free schools as a supplement to LAs’ existing resources. If a strong proposal is received by a trust that both the Local Authority and the Secretary of State wish to take forward, DfE will provide capital funding and start-up grants subject to value for money assessments. This document sets out the key information regarding the school that Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council will be establishing alongside DfE. Trusts should use the information within this document, alongside the engagement events, to determine whether they would like to apply to open the school, and to base their application on. 2. Key dates 24 July 2018 Special and AP free schools wave is launched – the guidance and criteria for local authorities seeking to establish new special or alternative provision free schools is published. 11 March 2019 Announcement of successful LA bids. Competitions in successful areas subsequently open. 30 September 2019 Deadline for proposers to submit applications in successful areas. October – Sandwell LA and DfE to evaluate submitted applications and December 2019 interview trusts To be confirmed Approved applications announced. 2 3. Contact details and further information If you would like any further information or would like to discuss your application, please contact: Name: Moira Tallents Job title: Group Head: Inclusive Learning Email: [email protected] Tel: 0121 569 2777 Name: Melanie Barnett Job title: Group Head: Inclusive Learning Email: [email protected] Tel: 0121 569 2163 If you would like any further information or would like to discuss the site, please contact: Name: Martyn Roberts Job title: Team Lead Capital and Planning Email: [email protected] Tel: 0121 569 8341 Please find below the contact details of the Regional Schools Commissioner: RSC: Mr Andrew Warren, RSC’s office: West Midlands Email: [email protected] 3 4. Sandwell MBC Context and Planning Sandwell LA is running this competition because it currently has no specific special school that caters for the needs of pupils with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Our current provision includes 97 mainstream primary schools, 10 of which have ASD specific resource bases. All the resource bases are within 'good' or 'outstanding' mainstream schools. There are 4 'good' or 'outstanding' special schools within Sandwell: 1 for pupils with Social, Emotional, Mental and Health (SEMH) difficulties (primary and secondary),1 for pupils with Moderate Learning Difficulties (MLD) and other needs, 2 for pupils with complex and severe learning difficulties (1 primary and 1secondary). The new Special Free school for pupils with ASD would fill a gap in provision. Currently all the primary resource bases have limited capacity and are catering for pupils with an increased level of need. All Sandwell special schools have a large cohort of pupils with ASD and associated difficulties, however they also have limited capacity to provide support for the increased number of children with ASD and MLD. The new special free school would take pupils initially identified either through the Early Years ASD pathway within Inclusion Supports child development centre (2 years – 5 years), mainstream schools and resource bases through the EHCP assessment or annual review processes. Recommendations for the need for enhanced provision will come through specialist assessment by Educational Psychologists and specialist teachers for Complex Communication and Autism (CCAT) that work within all Sandwell schools. Currently mainstream schools have identified that there is a lack of specialist provision places for pupils with ASD and Complex Needs. Pupil transition into the new school would be supported by the feeder school and Inclusion Support Early Years Team, EPs and CCAT team. The new school would also be supported by these teams through Inclusive Learning time allocation system that is used for all schools and receive allocated services from health and social care. Sandwell currently runs a partially traded model for support services, so school would have the opportunity to purchase more support in addition to their allocation if desired. We would expect the new school to make good links with Autism West Midlands who co-ordinate support for parents of children with ASD. A special free secondary school has already been approved as part of Wave 11 of the free schools programme by the DfE / ESFA. The new school will open on an adjacent site in September 2021. The proposed primary free special school would be expected to work closely with adjacent secondary free school to ensure a smooth and collaborative transition from Key Stage 2 to 3. 4 SECTION TWO: THE SCHOOL The tables below list key details of the school proposed. Your application must be for a school that has these key characteristics. Please note you only need to complete the relevant table depending on the type of school. Type of school Special Area of SEN provided for Autistic Spectrum Disorder with Moderate (please detail designation Learning Difficulties alongside additional information known about the cohort’s needs and abilities) Which local authorities are Sandwell MBC committed to commissioning places? How many places have been 126 places will be commissioned by Sandwell commissioned and by which MBC alone local authority? Per-pupil revenue funding the £10,000 per place (base funding) plus £12,864 local authority would expect per pupil (top-up funding). All pupils would to pay (if a range of rates, receive the same level of top-up funding as this is please explain and detail the a standing agreement with all our specialist rates per pupil, including provision. estimates for how many of the cohort will be in each band) Age range 5 to 11 Gender (Boys/Girls/Co- Co-educational educational) Total number of proposed full 126 time equivalent places (once school is at full capacity – this should include 16-19 places but not nursery) Type of placements offered Full-time (e.g. full time, short term, part time) Number of nursery places, if 0 applicable Number of 16-19 places, if 0 applicable 5 Any planned outreach, Sandwell consists of six town areas. There is training and/or reintegration currently no special school provision for ASD with support (including details of MLD within the three towns that form the northern funding that will be made half of Sandwell. There is no planned outreach, available to support the training and / or reintegration support planned school with this) since the Authority wishes to see the school establish itself within the area, with a view to encouraging the new school provider to offer outreach and training. For primary aged ASD children (with MLD) it is not envisaged that reintegration support would be considered relevant. The table below details the number of places that the local authority proposes for each year group at the point of opening until the school is full. Year of +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 opening 0 0 0 0 0 0 Nursery 0 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 Reception Key stage 1 0 18 36 36 36 36 36 (Y1-2) Key stage 2 0 0 0 18 36 54 72 (Y3-6) Key stage 3 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a (Y7-9) Key stage 4 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a (Y10-11) 16-19: n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a commissioner referred 18 36 54 72 90 108 126 Totals 6 SECTION THREE: RATIONALE AND CONTEXT FOR THE SCHOOL This section describes the rationale and the context in which the new school will operate. At present we have 166 young people in our special schools that have a diagnosis of ASD as well as a further 39 in an out of borough special school. There are 100 pupils placed in mainstream resource bases. There is very little capacity within our current specialist provisions to provide the additional places required to meet the needs of pupils with ASD and MLD. The local authority has seen a year on year growth of 0.1% since 2014 of pupils requiring an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) in schools - an additional 390 pupils since 2014. In line with the trend experienced in the mainstream sector, we expect this figure to continue to rise with the growth of the general school population. There has also been an 18.5% increase in primary aged children with EHCP’s being diagnosed with ASD, with a further 105 children awaiting diagnosis. A Specialist Free secondary school for ASD pupils has been agreed during Wave 11 however there is a need for a primary equivalent as current specialist provision is already near to capacity. The places will be filled from the population that would currently be placed in out of borough specialist schools, our LA special schools and resource provisions. This would relieve current pressures on LA special schools as places would become available for children with other complex needs. It would also relieve pressures on schools with resources bases as the more complex students with ASD + MLD could be accommodated in special schools, leaving those who are more likely to make academic progress in a mainstream school. Resource provisions have seen a dramatic increase in the level of need of children they are placing and due to this 2 schools have recently decided to close their provision.