Special schools set for shake-up

Lancashire County Council's cabinet member for education, Coun Alan Whittaker has agreed to closure notices to publicise plans to close five special schools and create four new ones.

The notices were agreed at a meeting of the council on Thursday.

The changes will form part of the transformation of secondary education in the two boroughs which will see 11 high schools bulldozed in Burnley, Nelson and Brierfield to make way for seven new state-of-art buildings.

Burnley and Pendle had been on the reserve list for funding in 2004/2005, but earlier this month had its bid for £170million under the Government's Building Schools for the Future programme accepted.

Statutory notices will now be published to close Calder View, Westway, Primrose Hill, Townhouse and Gibfield schools from July 31, 2005. New schools will be created from August 1, 2005 to replace them.

Two new special schools will be created in Burnley. The first, for 50 boys and girls aged two to 11, will be set up in the current Primrose Hill premises, in Harrogate Crescent, with a view to moving it to share the site of an existing school in Burnley, which is yet to be chosen.

The second, for 90 boys and girls aged 11 and 19, will initially start in the Westway and Calder View premises in March Street.

But there are plans to move it to the same site as the new secondary school being built in the North East area of Burnley in 2008 as part of the Building Schools for the Future programme.

In Pendle a new special school for 50 boys and girls aged two to 11 will be set-up at Townhouse, in Townhouse Road, Nelson, with plans to co-locate on the site of an existing Pendle primary school, which has yet to be decided.

A second community special school for 90 boys and girls, aged 11 to 19, will start in the Gibfield premises, in Gibfield Road, Colne, but will move to the site of the new secondary school planned for east Nelson.