Ten schools in Bexley will benefit from a new funding package aimed at offering support for children with severe Special Education Needs.

The council is to provide more than 90 specialist spaces for children with Autistic Spectrum

Disorders, Hearing Impairments and Severe Learning Difficulties.

Schools will receive a combined total of £1.25million to set up special needs support by 2009 and then further funding of about £1.2million a year to maintain the new facilities in mainstream schools.

The funding was announced at a cabinet meeting on the evening of Wednesday, March 19, and follows more than two years of evaluation and consultation on SEN provision in Bexley after parents raised concerns that a high number of children were having to be sent to special schools outside the borough due to a lack of spaces in Bexley.

The money will enable schools to build new classrooms, bring in specialist teachers and teaching assistants and to buy new equipment.

Pelham Primary will also receive a share of the cash to extend its current provision.

Cabinet member for Schools, Adult Education and Youth Services, Cllr Simon Windle, said: “This is a much-needed provision, our schools desperately need this. It’s a travesty that so many parents need to go out of the borough for their SEN provision.”

Expensive

Council leader Ian Clement added: “This is something we should have done a long time ago.”

In 2005 the council co-ordinated a comprehensive audit of the SEN provision in Bexley.

It says that by removing the need to place children in expensive out-of-borough places, it will save them money.

However, the founder of the Bexley Autism Support Information Centre charity, Sylvia Dobies, is unsure that the money has been spent in the right place.

She said: “I think these places were made to save some money and I am worried that money is not going to be put back. It is a difficult thing marrying autistic children with mainstream schools and I think we should have got another special school in Bexley instead. This is great news but not for everyone.”