£23.5m is being pumped into Swindon SEND provision but it's not nearly enough
Amanda Wilkins welcomes new SEND school and extra places but worries it's a 'sticking plaster on a gaping wound'
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“A sticking plaster over a gaping wound”
North Swindon mother Amanda Wilkins, who has three children diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), has had a constant struggle to get the special educational support they need. She welcomes the recent announcement by Swindon Borough Council that £23.5m will be pumped into SEND provision in the town, which includes a whole new SEND school and 66 new places, but worries that this is only a drop in the ocean of what is really needed.
By Amanda Wilkins
This week brought fantastic news for the Swindon SEND community with the announcement of a brand new SEND (special educational needs and disability) school, and the creation of 66 extra SEND places in existing provisions.
It was literally a hold the press moment for me. I was just packing up for the day, about to brave my local supermarket and endure the weekly shop, when the news came into the office. I unpacked my laptop and quickly wrote up the piece and we put the story out as fast as we could. This was big news that needed to be seen by everyone.
The story, as expected, blew up.
So many families in Swindon have young people with SEND.
The figure of pupils with SEND in Swindon and the country as a whole, is rising at a staggering rate. Nationally, 2023 figures show that over 1.5 million pupils in England are identified as having SEND, which is an increase of 87,000 from 2022.
Whilst the news is definitely something to be celebrated, and the hard work of the local councillors and MPs something to be praised, I can’t help but worry that this is somewhat of a finger in the dyke situation, a sticking plaster over a gaping wound. With the huge rise in pupils with SEND all across the country, will this announcement be enough to fill the gap?
Swindon was in a particularly dire state back in 2014 when my son needed a SEND secondary school place. The only option offered to us by the council at the time, was a school that not only had a shockingly bad reputation but had failed its OFSTED inspection and was under special measures.
Thus followed a year-long battle between myself and the local authority. My son was out of education for a year before we secured a place in a school almost an hour away that could meet his complex needs and was finally agreed upon by the local authority. Whist we were grateful to eventually find a placement, the long journeys took a toll, causing anxiety for my son who suffered terrible travel sickness. The school was also not the best fit and this combined with the long travel times resulted in him leaving education for good, early on in year 10.
Had a suitable local school been available at the time I am convinced my son would have flourished and now have a bright future ahead of him, rather than the one he currently has. At the age of 20 things looks sadly rather bleak, he has only left the house once since Christmas as his anxiety is so high.
Churchward, Swindon’s newest SEND school, opened its doors in 2018 (sadly too late for my son) and has been a huge success. I have only ever heard positive things about the setting and I am crossing every finger and toe in the hope that my littlest one will be able to go next year, but it’s by no means a given. As with any SEND school, places don’t quite meet demand.
Last year protests took place all over the country following the news that the government had ‘quietly signed’ a contract that targets 20% cuts to the number of new education health and care plans (EHCP) issued for children with SEND. In 2021-22 the government produced a SEND and Alternative (AP) green paper which resulted in the creation of the Delivering Better Value Programme, which is aimed at helping local authorities make cuts to their already woefully inadequate SEND budgets.
With the threat of cuts looming overhead, it was therefore a welcome relief to hear the news of the new SEND school and extra places. It seems that the Swindon local authority are actually rising to the challenge and doing something positive about the SEND education crisis in Swindon rather than looking for ways to cut funding further.
This week Swindon Borough Council announced that they will spend £22.43m over the next four years to create 66 new places at four existing schools as well as build a brand-new special school. The extra spaces in the primary schools will be available in September 2024 and 2025. The new special school will have space for 100 children and will be built to expand the current provision for children with SEND still further and is expected to be ready by 2028.
Funding from the SEND Capital Grant, which is received from the Department for Education and Section 106 developer contributions, will be used to create the additional 66 places. The money will be used to expand the specialist provision already at Eldene Primary School, creating an extra 10 Key Stage One places. A 24-place Key Stage One and Key Stage Two unit will be created at Badbury Park Primary School, while current special schools Nyland Primary and St Luke’s Academy will receive funding to create an additional 16 places at both schools.
With places at special schools continuing to increase, the council’s cabinet also agreed to borrow £13.2m to build a new special school. Council officers are currently reviewing available sites including options to redevelop existing buildings to offer state-of-the-art facilities. The new special school will provide additional places across all key stages from age four to 19.
Councillor Adorabelle Amaral-Shaikh, Swindon Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Education, said: “I am absolutely delighted we have secured this funding to provide additional places at special schools in Swindon, as it is incredibly important that we have enough specialist provision for the children and young people in the Borough who need it.
“We are blessed with fantastic special schools, with dedicated leaders and staff teams supporting our children and families and many of our mainstream schools also have specialist units across all ages who are doing an amazing job through inclusive specialist provision. Swindon is a fast-expanding town and we know we will need more capacity as we continue to grow.
“I’d like to thank my cabinet colleagues for supporting the capital borrowing bid for the new special school and I look forward to seeing our provision for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities continue to grow and flourish in the years ahead.”
The general consensus regarding the news of the new SEND school amongst the local community and the SEND community is overall very positive, however it would seem that I’m not alone in my concerns regarding the news. While for some it will be too late for their young people, others fear that it will be not nearly enough to meet the current and future high demand.
There are also worries regarding the type of provision. One of the issues we currently face in Swindon with our secondary SEND provision is that despite having mainstream secondary schools with attached SEND units, these units are currently not meeting the needs of many young people placed in them. The expectation seems to be that the unit is only a brief respite, and the child is forced into the mainstream school alongside everyone else and expected to just get on with it. I had hoped that my youngest would be able to attend this type of placement, but based on my research so far, I would have extreme concerns about their ability to meet her needs.
SEND is complex, one size does not fit all and the expectation that we can shoehorn SEND children into mainstream and make them fit, is damaging and incredibly concerning. What Swindon needs is better SEND training for teachers and teaching assistants, more funding, much, much, much more funding and a variety of specialist provisions that cater to all types of SEND.
Overall the announcement is good news and I don’t wish to appear negative and detract in any way from the tremendous work that will have gone into making the school and additional places a reality. It gives us hope that our local authority and local MPs are listening to us and are trying to help but please, do not think for one minute that the problem of SEND places in Swindon will be fixed with this announcement. It will take far more investment before the problem is anywhere close to being solved.
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The Ink Piece
Culture Vulture
Making a Scene
A Spotlight on... Deadlight Dance
By Dave Franklin of Dancing About Architecture
Old goths never die...they get sensible jobs, start families, adopt responsibilities, and make music in their spare time. It's not quite the snappiest sound bites, but it's probably accurate, especially when applied to Deadlight Dance.
Ironically, by the time musicians have ventured beyond that initial learning curve, have tired of sofa surfing, being broke and chasing dreams, they are probably twice the musicians they once were, are unfettered by ego or pretensions to stardom, and they can afford decent equipment and fuel for the van. In almost all cases, musicianship and performance are wasted on the young; they just aren't equipped for the job.
I often wonder if Deadlight Dance was a joke that got out of hand.
I don't mean any offence, but when I first encountered them at The Swindon Shuffle, these two lifelong friends were playing 80's goth standards on acoustic guitars and mandolins—a fun concept but one that you can only spin out for so long.
So, with only two long-term options available to them - position the band as a short-term fun project or evolve into a fully formed, original musical vehicle that echoes that earlier sound rather than repackages it - they, thankfully, took the latter option. (I might be wrong in this theory, but it makes good copy.)
The result of this decision to become a band in the more conventional sense saw them plug in, volume up and write some killer originals that formed their debut album.
Beyond is an album that might be seen as both a tribute to a time and a place - the epicentre being arguably Le Phonographique in Leeds (or Camden's Electric Ballroom for those who had a fear of travelling north of Watford) around 1980, as well as a sonic torch in the musical wilderness, one keeping the sound alive in the modern era.
Goth music, like all genres, has changed much over the years, getting subsumed by pop, new romanticism, metal and folk along the way, but with a current wave of post-punkers riding high, both from people like Deadlight Dance returning to their roots and the offspring of that generation explore their parent's record collections and liking what they hear; this album is perfectly timed.
Even before you get to the music itself, the language and track names, the band's image and countenance ooze that second-wave goth explosion, the one between the formative Punk-Gothique Catalyst Phase of bands such as Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Late Stage Revivalism of late-comers such as The Fields of The Nephilim.
Generally, in pop music, as in a Tesco Delicatessent, yesterday's exotic is today's commonplace; but here, the brothers Grim (winky face emoji) manage to retain the mystique and manner of those bands that came to define the initial scene, particularly the unholy trinity of The Sisters of Mercy, The March Violets and The Mission.
It's an album that contains the musical signatures and creative finger-prints of the times, bruised and brooding bass lines, coils of guitars that ebb and flow between the chiming and shimmering and abrasive and razor wire, digital beats and a lyrical language that blends gothic romance with a colder clinical tone. Imagine Charlotte Bronte collaborating with Dostoevsky! But also running through the song is an electronic sheen that often adds some beguiling tones and intriguing textures, the sound of nostalgic futurism meeting cutting edge modernity.
Deadlight Dance is more than just a band reminiscing on their boyhood record collections, though there would be nothing wrong with that. They are a band that sit at the end of an extended family tree. For every note, chord, line and musical move that resonates with the past, they offer just as many that ensure post-punk in general and old-school infused goth, in particular, has a interesting future, gets another day in the sun, as it were. (The creatures of the night aren't going to like that metaphor, but you know what I mean.)
Send any review submissions in physical form to: Dave Franklin, Dancing About Architecture, 21 Portsmouth Street, Swindon, SN1 2LF
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