Expansion of St Anthony's School

Summary of Proposals

It is proposed to expand St Anthony's School into the vacant school building previously occupied by Jessie Younghusband Primary School, which is located on the same site as St Anthony's School. The objective of expanding St Anthony’s School and increasing it’s planned place numbers is to create new specialist school placements that are necessary to support the growing demand for specialist school placements within West Sussex. The proposed expansion would create 50 additional special school placements taking their planned place numbers up to 298.

St Anthony’s School is a special school based in Chichester. The school provides specialist support for pupils with moderate learning difficulties and additional learning barriers, such as autism spectrum disorder, social, emotional and mental health and speech, language and communication needs. All pupils attending the school have an education, health and care plan. Additional places will ensure that more children that require a specialist school place can be educated closer to home, minimising transport times and ensuring children are education within their community.

Expansion of St Anthony’s into the vacant Jessie Younghusband building also allows space for future development of St Anthony’s on site if required in the longer term.

Need for Change

There is an ongoing shortfall of specialist places for children and young people in West Sussex and an urgent requirement to provide additional places. . This is in line with what is being seen nationally - see Support for children and young people with special educational needs - NAO report (opens in new window). West Sussex special schools are operating above capacity. Year on year the number of children who require a place in a special school, but do not get one, is growing. Special schools have grown on physical sites which have not grown, which has increased pressure on the schools. The complexity of needs of pupils has also increased resulting in an increase in staff, which has also put more pressure on the schools. The County Council has a statutory duty to provide sufficient school places for all children who need a place.

In West Sussex there has been a significant growth in the number of children and young people with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). The county currently maintains over 10,000 EHCPs. Whilst we would expect most children and young people with an EHCP to be supported within a maintained mainstream school setting, there is increased demand for specialist provision and approved place numbers of all the Council’s maintained special schools have been exceeded.

Increasing provision for children and young people with SEND through the creation of additional places will assist with the aim of enabling children to attend school locally. Consequently, this will reduce the number of children and young people with SEND moving from maintained schools and academies into costly education provision in the Independent and Non-Maintained Special School sector.

Statutory Notices

The public consultation is a two-stage process. An informal consultation took place over a seven week period (14 December 2023 - 31 January 2024) in relation to the relocation of Jessie Younghusband Primary School and the expansion of St Anthony's School into the Jessie Younghusband School site. At the end of this period, and following analysis of the comments received, the Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, Learning and Skills, Jacquie Russell, took the decision to publish statutory notices for these projects. The statutory proposals for the relocation of Jessie Younghusband School have already taken please and Jessie Younghusband have now vacated the school buildings that sit on the same site as St Anthony's School. We are now entering the formal statutory notice period for the expansion of St Anthony's School which will run for a five week period from 2 October 2025 - 6 November 2025.

Publication of statutory proposals provides the opportunity for the public to submit comments regarding the proposal during a time-limited representation period. Once the deadline for providing representations has passed and any feedback received has been considered, the Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, Learning and Skills will be asked to determine whether the expansion of St Anthony's School into the vacant Jessie Younghusband site should proceed. We anticipate the final decision to enable the expansion of St Anthony's School will be taken in December 2025.

Full details of the statutory proposal can be found in the documents folder, a printed copy may also be obtained by emailing the address below.

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