Agenda item

Report from the Strategic Director for Children and Young People’s Services.

Recommendations:

That Cabinet:

1.    Approve the School Accessibility Strategy.

2.    Approve the Capital Accessibility Funding Framework and schools’ accessibility application process.

3.    To provide a future report to Cabinet to approve the outcome of the application for the capital funding.

Consideration was given to the report submitted which detailed that all schools had a statutory duty to provide ‘reasonable adjustments’ for their pupils to make sure disabled students were not discriminated against. There were three main categories of adjustment that schools were expected to make for children: Improving access to the curriculum, improving physical access to buildings including providing specialist equipment and improving access to information.

The updated Rotherham School’s Accessibility Strategy identified all schools’ statutory responsibilities to support their pupils and the support available to schools from the Council in relation to their own Accessibility planning.

Rotherham were committed to delivering improved special educational provision with a capital allocation of £375k per year (two separate pots of money) for both mainstream and special schools for the next four years.

The Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board acknowledged the work that had taken place on this when it was presented to Scrutiny and a comprehensive session had taken place and that it was an extremely good news story for Rotherham.

The recommendations were then proposed.

Resolved: That Cabinet:

1.    Approved the School Accessibility Strategy.

2.    Approved the Capital Accessibility Funding Framework and schools’ accessibility application process.

3.    Agreed that there would be a future report provided to Cabinet to approve the outcome of the application for the capital funding.