In today's Cutswatch, we visit Bridgwater in Somerset, where innovative schools projects, that would have allowed pupils with differing needs to share new facilities, have been scrapped
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Where even sharing is being cut
Yesterday, I went to Bridgwater, in Somerset, to talk to the headteachers of three schools that have had their Building Schools for the Future projects cancelled. It's the constituency of the Tory MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, who broke ranks on Wednesday to threaten to march on Downing Street over the halted projects.
The range of problems faced by educators in Bridgewater – and their innovative plans to counter them – seemed to make it an ideal place to understand the severity of the effect of these cuts.
What was immediately clear is that schools whose redevelopment plans have been abandoned face a much wider range of challenges than headline-grabbing "crumbling buildings" – and more even than the inappropriate sites for children with disabilities, old-fashioned classrooms and cramped corridors I saw.
Building Schools for the Future (BSF) projects in many areas, Bridgwater being a prime example, are also about helping schools work together to make sure that children across often deprived areas get access to as wide a range of facilities as possible – and benefit in their social development from that experience of sharing.
Two of the cancelled projects were at Haygrove secondary school and Penrose special school - see our gallery here. Haygrove's facilities aren't in a bad condition, but it's a former grammar school built in the 1930s, with regimented classrooms and a severe shortage of space – the site originally accommodated 300 students, but these days the roll is close to 1,200. Space is so squeezed when pupils move between lessons that the corridors operate to a strict one-way system and in the winter, when students are kept inside at lunchtime, the rules state that they must stay in their tutor group rooms for the entire break.
Penrose, which serves 52 students aged from two to 19 with severe physical and learning disabilities, also suffers from badly overcrowded conditions and a devastating lack of specialist facilities. The current site is less than a tenth of the size it needs to be, bulky specialist wheelchairs line the corridors and ugly scuff marks on every doorway mark the struggles of staff to get them through endless tight spaces.
The tiny library, stuffed with books and toys, just about has space for three pupils in chairs. An empty cupboard doubles up as a sensory "timeout" space for pupils. Some 40% of the pupil's use wheelchairs, making the slope outside, at a gradient that does not comply with disability legislation, a constant strain. And the toilets are so small that pupils who need to be hoisted out of their chairs to use them have to be lifted outside the room with mobile equipment and then moved in, dangling in the air.
"It's horrible," the head, Liz Hayward, said. "Foul."
Both schools would have got fantastic new buildings under the scheme, but, just as importantly to them, they would have been relocated to a shared site. The two already work closely together, but Haygrove's outdated buildings can make Penrose's students, their wheelchairs and their support staff, all but impossible to accomodate.
At the new site, Penrose's older pupils would have been taught alongside Haygrove's. The idea of being able to celebrate the milestone of going to a separate secondary school, where they would have so many more opportunities for learning and socialising, had thrilled students, Hayward told me.
Learning together would have changed attitudes, to the benefit of the whole town. Parents of Penrose children would not longer feel alienated, or feel that the rest of the community didn't understand them and their children, and all the students would have had the opportunity to forge lasting new friendships.
"My goal," Hayward said, "was that after they'd left school we would have people calling on our former students saying let's go to the pub."
At Haygrove, the message was the same. "Many of our children will end up being the movers, shakers and business owners in Bridgwater," said Deputy-head Brian Scowcroft. "If they have an inclusive attitude, if they've been brought up with people that are different from them, the impact on the town would be quite remarkable."
Three other schools in Bridgwater, a town that is among the 10% most socially deprived areas in the country, are also involved in its £100m BSF scheme. They are yet to hear if their rebuilds will go ahead – according to the Department for Education they are currently "under discussion". All six schools had worked together closely on the programme; the heads I met gave a real sense of how much this was a project that would serve the whole town, boosting hopes and aspirations. There are understandable fears that even if some of the rebuilds do go ahead, the split between the haves and the have-nots could weaken that feeling of collaboration.
Hayward is horrified by what has happened. "This is an appalling way for any nation to treat its young people," she said. "It is about a whole community that would be affected by the failure of this project, leading to a lack of ambition and the feeling that we don't matter."
She has not yet told her pupils about the cancellation of the scheme, and says she will not do so until it is quite certain it will not go ahead.
On a whiteboard in the reception area is a quote from the writer and social activist Thomas Merton. "The biggest human temptation is... to settle for too little," it reads. Another message is added underneath: "Let's not settle – let's fight it."
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