Archived decisions

Statement to:

Annexe 7

Reference BAS01

The Executive Lead Member for Children's Services

From:

The HAT for Basingstoke and Deane

Date:

16^th January 2006

Issue:

Review of resourced provision for deaf/ hard of hearing children

Decision:

This Statement will feed into the Decision to be made by the Executive Member for Children's Services on the 15^th February 2006

The HAT met to discuss the above issue on the 15^th of December 2006 and invited a Head teacher to represent the views of all the schools providing resourced provision in Basingstoke.

All HAT members are unanimously opposed to the closure of resourced provision for deaf/hard of hearing children in Basingstoke.

Members do not believe that the report received by the Executive Member for Children's Services on the 12^th of October 2006 is accurate and provides a full picture of the situation for the following reasons:

1) The report includes no statistics on the population growth of any of the areas affected. Basingstoke will have the largest housing growth and population growth in the County over the next 10 years - and will in turn have the highest numbers of children with hearing impairment in the County.

2) Basingstoke currently has the only complete pyramid of resourced provision in the County with nursery, infant, junior and secondary provision in close vicinity to each other.

3) No consideration has been given to the large amount of fund-raising that the local community have done to support the resourced provision in Basingstoke. The provision has also received support from the Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council through the Mayor's Charity Fund.

4) The Head teachers of the resourced provision in Basingstoke are concerned that due to the type of catchment area they serve local parents/ families are less likely to respond in a written format. Therefore in formal written consultation exercises there may appear to be less support from these parent/ families than there is in reality.

5) One of the options in the review is for children in Basingstoke to access services in Winchester/ Farnborough. This would involve the additional cost of taxiing children around the County everyday, (a costing for this is not provided in the report). There would also be an emotional cost as children would be taken away from their school friends at the end of each day. This is particularly important when children are part of a peer group who use British Sign Language to communicate.

6) For Basingstoke children to access resourced provision in Winchester there would need to be a primary phase provision set up in Winchester. In what way does it represent value for money to the council tax payers to shut down a complete pyramid in Basingstoke and spend scarce capital resources on building a replacement unit in a smaller population centre that is not destined for the growth which is projected for Basingstoke?

7) In addition to capital resources the cost of any new provision must include the time, effort and training that is involved in ensuring the creation of a deaf aware school. In Basingstoke all of the teachers are aware of how to work with deaf children and 5 additional teachers have taken qualifications in British Sign Language in order to communicate better with the children with hearing impairments. It takes time to build up this kind of expertise which is not reflected in the report.

8) The way in which the numbers on roll (Appendix 5) are presented is misleading. The figures for Parkview nursery and infant schools are displayed separately from the Parkview junior school giving the impression that the numbers on roll are lower than Manor Infant and Junior when in fact they are the same.

HAT Members are convinced that it would be a mistake to close the resourced provision in Basingstoke for the above reasons and would ask the Executive Member to consider this statement when making her decision on the 15^th of February 2007.