THE expansion of the Meadow Special School could be on the cards as part of a review of the organisation of special schools in East Hampshire.
Hampshire County Council's education committee is due to debate today (Friday) the possible amalgamation of the Bordon school with Whitedown Special School, Alton, creating one larger special school for the district.
Currently Meadow has 120 pupils with moderate learning difficulties on its register, aged between four and 16.
The Whitedown school caters for 50 pupils aged between two and 19.
In the report to the committee, county education officer Andrew Seber outlines the reasons why, if any reorganisation were to take place, Whitedown would be unsuitable for expansion.
"The school site is small and access is extremely poor. The building is of poor quality, a large proportion being of temporary construction.
"There is no room on the site to provide accommodation suitable to meet current standards and the small number on roll would, in any case, bring into question whether this was an efficient use of valuable resources.
"However it has a new hydrotherapy pool, paid for by the school through fundraising activities."
Of the Meadow School, Mr Seber says that "space is at a premium and that space for older children is limited".
However, the school is the larger of the two with room to expand on private land, although it is anticipated that demand would continue on a downward trend as a result of educating some children with special needs in mainstream schools.
He says: "Generally, therefore, there has been support from both schools for the idea of setting up one combined special school to serve the area, catering for pupils with complex learning difficulties, which would also serve as a resource, for example, for outreach support to local mainstream schools.
"In practice it is accepted that this would need to be on the Bordon site.
"This would release the Whitedown site for sale, but the hydrotherapy pool facility would need to be reprovided on the Bordon site."
Education committee chairman Don Allen said that the plans were by no means "set in stone" and that full funding for the project had not yet been identified.
"The approach of supporting our special schools with units in mainstream schools has been successful in other parts of the county.
"One of the benefits is that children with moderate learning difficulties can go to a local school close to home while receiving specialist attention and expertise from the unit's staff.
"We have set out a framework for how we could potentially achieve improved accommodation for children and staff working in this area, but this is a genuine consultation and we will be very open to the options and views of staff, parents, governors and town and district councillors so that we can develop this sensitively in a way which benefits the maximum number of people.
"We also still have a job to do to identify a full funding package for what could be a major capital investment of over £5 million."
If the committee agrees to accept the report, the council will decide in September whether to proceed with consultations. If the scheme goes ahead, it is anticipated that the new school would be open in September 2004.