£1.5m lifeline for school 'that gives its pupils the chance they deserve'

NEARLY £1.5m of extra funding will be provided by Somerset Council to prevent a new special needs school from having to close after less than a year.

- DANIEL MUMBY Local democracy journalist [e-mail]

Hill View School, operated by the Oak Partnership Trust, lies on Main Street between the A303 and the small village of Ash near Yeovil, supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

The school which was directly funded by the Department for Education (DfE) opened in September 2024 after years of delays but is now floundering in light of construction issues and lower than anticipated pupil numbers. While the DfE has provided some funding to address the construction issues, it will not be enough to ensure a high enough standard of education for the existing pupils and those expected to be enrolled over the next 12 months.

Somerset Council is therefore being forced to “carry the can”, providing additional funding through its high needs block and thereby increasing its risk of declaring effective bankruptcy in the near-future.

Hill View School was approved by the DfE as a free school following a successful bid by Somerset County Council in 2018 in light of the lack of SEND places in nearby mainstream schools. The delivery of the project was delayed for several years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the original multi-academy trust identified by the DfE having to pull out in late-2023. The Oak Partnership Trust was appointed to run the school ahead of its official opening in September 2024 despite the trust’s concerns about the design and funding structure of the new school.

Within a month of the school opening its doors to its first 60 pupils, the trust was reporting “significant operational difficulties” with the new school, including substantial problems with the fabric of the building. These includes water ingress (forcing several classrooms to close), faulty gates on the car park (presenting a safeguarding issue), door fastenings which easily broke off, incorrectly installed “non-climb fences" and staff shortages.