Portsmouth City Council (PCC) is planning to invest £7.5 million in the Omega Arts Centre in Southsea to convert it into a special needs school. University of Portsmouth journalism student Ivana Domozetska reports.
PCC has been feeling the pressures of increasing demand for special educational needs (SEN). Councillor Suzy Horton said: ‘It’s my responsibility to get the best for the children in the city. This council prioritises the needs of the most vulnerable.’
She added that central government ‘needs to step up’ before the problem becomes worse for local authorities.
An LGA (Local Government Association) report from 2024 predicted that the SEN sector will create a £3.6 billion budget deficit for local councils in 2025 if financial changes aren’t made.
Councillor Horton thinks Portsmouth has ‘done really well’ with handling the SEN crisis. Describing how the council has invested more into the alternative provision, which provides support for special needs children within a mainstream school.
The proposed new school will be designed for children with severe and complex SEND (special educational needs and disabilities). It will be the sixth specialist school to be built in Portsmouth and will increase capacity by 25%. Councillor Horton believes this can remove some of the pressure on both specialist schools and those mainstream schools with additional resources provision for SEN students.
Kit Peet, 19, is in her second year in university at UCL but grew up in Portsmouth. She is profoundly deaf with suspected ADHD. She thinks that the attitude amongst Portsmouth people towards SEN ‘could be a lot better.’
In her primary school years, Kit had ‘sufficient support’ through speech therapy and visits from an audiologist.
This all changed in secondary school. She said: ‘I faced a lot of microaggressions by professionals. I needed more support in secondary as the workload got more.’
Kit recounts how staff in her secondary school didn’t understand or know about her disability and wouldn’t make the adjustments in lessons for her needs.
GCSEs were another struggle for Kit. She thought she was treated as a mainstream student and received almost no support.
‘I think people fail to realise the most important thing is how you approach [SEN children]. Talk to us like we are human but don’t deny the fact that our disability or special needs are there because we need them to be acknowledged.’
Kit started making use of CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services), hoping for a confirmed diagnosis of ADHD. But the diagnosis took too long and when Kit turned 18 she was no longer eligible for the services.
She said: ‘It was very frustrating because I was very close to getting an answer when I was 17.’
In her post-16 education, Kit felt a real turnaround in support through City of Portsmouth College.
‘I owe a lot to the college because their support made me realise that I was entitled to the support I need.’
Kit found the support was ‘a lot more hands on’ and the college more specialist staff to support her needs due to larger numbers of SEN pupils in her college.
Kit thought it was important her college didn’t try to make her feel normal. They recognised that she was deaf and had different needs.
PCC invested in another specialist school last September, the Wymering School in Cosham, for SEN children aged 9–16.
However, a 2024 report from the Department of Education revealed that Portsmouth is way below the national average for Education Health Care plans provided within the 20-week statutory period.
In a statement, Councillor Horton said: ‘In Portsmouth there was a perfect storm of massive increase in demand, staffing vacancies and, like the rest of the country, access to Educational Psychologists.’
The UK has been experiencing a national shortage of educational psychologists since the beginning of the pandemic.
Councillor Horton said that Portsmouth responded by investing in agency staff and over-recruiting educational psychologists to prevent future problems.
PCC’s 2024–25 school budget showed that Portsmouth spends just over 14% of its education budget for SEN. This is within the national average for SEN spending.
When asked about the future of SEN Councillor Horton said: ‘The council has the plans, but they constantly need to be adapted because we don’t have the money… the resources needed to cope with increasing need and complexity will need further central government financial investment.’
Image by Harrison Keely re-used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
