Primary/Special Schools Plan Released

One local primary to close - special needs provision expanded

Radical changes have been proposed to the provision of primary and special needs education in the borough. The plan, which is to be considered at the next meeting of the Council Cabinet on 10th September envisages the closure of one poorly performing school in the borough, the building of a centre for children with autism and a new special needs centre at Langford Primary School.

The Queensmill School for children with autism will be moved from Fulham to a site in West Kensington. Peterborough Primary School in Fulham is slated for closure due to poor test results and a falling pupil roll. The school currently only has 40% of its places taken up. The council is in active negotiations with the French government to open a bilingual primary school on the Peterborough site once it becomes available. The new school would operate in partnership with a local state primary school.

"We want more local parents to choose our primary schools for their children," says H&F Council's cabinet member for children's services, Cllr Antony Lillis. "We have a large number of surplus places in our primary schools and cannot afford to continue to run schools which are little more than half full. We also want to build on the success of Queensmill School, one of the country's best state schools for children with autism, by providing it with vastly improved premises - a move which is hugely important to the children who will benefit."

Subject to approval of the funding, the report recommends giving the go-ahead to relocating Queensmill School from its present five-storey Victorian building in Fulham to a state-of-the-art building in West Kensington. Jude Ragan, head teacher of Queensmill School, said, "We have worked very hard to overcome the drawbacks of our present building and our good practice has been recognised by the National Autistic Society. However, we very much hope to move to a new site where there is more space, uncluttered and calm surroundings and separate rooms for speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, music therapy as well as specialist areas of teaching such as food preparation, art, music and science."

The new Queensmill building would be on the site of Gibbs Green School, with the small number of pupils at Gibbs Green moving to the new centre on the Langford Primary School site. Expanding facilities on the site of Langford Primary School, in Fulham, to include specialist support for pupils who are having difficulties in mainstream primary schools would offer greater opportunities to reintegrate these children back into mainstream school according to the report. Langford head teacher Anne-Louise De Buriane said, "We could create a successful - perhaps exemplary - model of how to meet the needs of these children within a mainstream school."

Almost 40% of the places in community primary schools in south Fulham are unfilled so proposals to remove this spare capacity are also included in the review. It is recommended that Peterborough Primary School closes because it has fewer pupils than any of the other three local community schools, the lowest attainment levels in national tests and no permanent head teacher.

If the Cabinet agrees the report, Peterborough Primary would close at the end of the summer term in 2008. Pupils would transfer to other local primary schools

The report is published on the council's web site at www.lbhf.gov.uk

August 23, 2007