Council approves £561,000 project to improve Wollaston School's special educational needs facilities

A £561,000 project to provide better facilities for schoolchildren with special needs at a secondary school has been approved.

North Northamptonshire Council’s executive gave the plan for an extension at Wollaston School the go-ahead on Thursday.

The project will be managed by the Nene Valley Partnership, which runs the school, and NNC will only act to secure the funding. That will come from the Department for Education’s higher needs funding.

NNC said facilities at the school for children with special needs are “limited and stretched”. Several students at the school have significant high-level needs which the school is currently “struggling to meet”, it said.

The authority said if those needs are not met at the school, it would be faced with paying more for home to school transport costs because students would need to be taken to other areas. Some of those would be outside Northamptonshire.

The two new spaces would be able to accommodate 12 pupils. Planning approval still needs to be secured for the project if it is to go ahead.

The Nene Valley Partnership also runs Irchester Community Primary School, Bozeat Community Primary School and its nursery and Cogenhoe Primary School. It was set up in 2019.