PARENTS of two children who attend special schools have spoken to the Gazette & Herald about their thoughts on the current special education needs consultation Wiltshire.

The proposal includes plans to close St Nicholas’ in Chippenham and Larkrise in Trowbridge to build a £20m centre of excellence in Rowde, near Devizes in 2023.

On Monday £10,000 was raised to fund legal fees to challenge the Wiltshire Council proposal.

Lucas

When Lucas’s 10-year-old brother Freddie found out St Nicholas School in Chippenham might close, he knew straight away it would be bad news for his brother.

Mum Ursula Green said: “He said Lucas wouldn’t like a big school and knew that wasn’t right for him. St Nick’s is about the right size for Lucas now and going to a different place will give cause him anxiety.”

Lucas is seven and has a rare learning disability as well as autism. The family live in Chippenham and exchanged contracts on a new home just around the corner from St Nicholas the day the consultation into special education needs schools was announced. “At first I thought it was impossible, that the plans would not happen,” Mrs Green said.

“We moved house because of schools and wanted to be in the right place for our children. We had thought in the future that Freddie and Lucas would be able to walk to their schools together. We are finding it hard to get Lucas to walk at the moment, however, the school goes out every week to the shops and that gets the children out in the community. He loves the school and everyday Lucas skips into school.”

Lucas does not speak and mainstream school was not an option for him. Since joining St Nicholas’ his parents have watched him grow and progress. He would move to the proposed new school in Rowde when he is a teenager and would go on to Wiltshire College at 16, instead of remaining at St Nicholas’ until turning 19.

The family also have Susannah, 20 months, and had planned on seeing their three children grow up in Chippenham, the community that Lucas visits both with school and with his siblings.

Mrs Green and husband Alex now face a 25-minute journey to Rowde when Lucas gets to around 12, just as he enters his teenage years.

Mrs Green said: “My other children will all walk to school, and Lucas shouldn’t be prevented from being able to do this very normal part of growing up too. Chippenham and Trowbridge are big Wiltshire towns and if you look at the populations they should have a special school in them. It is important for him to be in familiar surroundings and in the town that he is a community member of.”

Jai

Mum Konnie Shanker lives with her son Jai, 11, in Market Lavington. Jai has profound complex special needs and attends Larkrise in Trowbridge because of its specialist care. Developmentally, Jai is the equivalent to a nine to 11-month-old.

Before moving to Market Lavington, the family lived in London where Jai went to a special school that had around 100 pupils.

She fears that Wiltshire Council’s centre for excellence will create the same problems he experienced at the larger London school, where he spent long periods in just one classroom and did not get the one-to-one care that he now gets at Larkrise.

She said: “The London school only had around 100 pupils but it seemed so much bigger than Larkrise.

“I understand that Wiltshire Council wants to bring children back into the county but I can see the children being more separated because they talk about classroom pods where they will learn.

“When we were in London he didn’t mix as much with other pupils and he remained in his classroom with other children with similar or even more complex and medical needs.

“This meant that he wasn’t getting the dedicated one-to-one care he needed because there were children with more with more complicated needs taking up the teachers’ time.

“When we left I was told we were leaving at a good time because he wasn’t getting the best care.”

Mrs Shanker is considering taking Jai out of the county for his post-16 education because she feels that plans to work with Wiltshire College will not be right for his needs. She said: “I have been told that he might need to go out of county to have boarding care which I really do not want to happen. The places they are comparing the centre of excellence to are not the same.

“Three Ways in Bath is still small. It has less than 200 pupils so it isn’t the same. I moved out of London to get more space for Jai and now I am seriously considering moving somewhere where he can get the care he needs.

“He will be 15 by the time this happens so I am not even sure if it is worth him going to the new school and all the upheaval of him going there for one year.

“The information about post-16 education seems to be building on what is already there but that is not appropriate for children with complex severe needs like Jai.

“I do not feel there has been enough information about this which makes me think maybe the council are not working very hard on it.”

She added: “Unless you are a parent of a child with special needs, you do not know what it is like. I think what councillors don’t understand is that these children don’t just need help feeding and changing, they need specialist one-to-one care to give them a sensory education.”