Rainbow Hub celebrates approval for special educational needs school

The team at Rainbow Hub is celebrating the success of its planning application to build a school for special educational needs children at its Mawdesley location. The planning application was submitted earlier this year and approval will see building commence at the end of July with completion scheduled for June 2024.

The school is being developed to meet the needs of children with physical disabilities who have the ability to learn, but whose families struggle to find appropriate education for them. Many local authority schools are not able to meet their needs, but they deserve access to knowledge and skills personalised to their needs, which will help them to lead as full and independent lives as possible.    

There will be several therapy rooms, a ground level Rebound Therapy trampoline, an accessible life skills room and a hydrotherapy pool. The building has been designed with shared spaces which will be used by all the services across Rainbow Hub. They also plan to make the pool available to children and adults with disabilities outside of school hours.

An application to register as an independent special school has been submitted and they are now awaiting the pre-registration visit from Ofsted.  When open, the school will initially offer places to children aged 5 – 11 years who have physical challenges but can follow a personalised curriculum, with plans to extend to young people up to 16 years in the future.

Lyndsay Fahey, CEO, Rainbow Hub, said: "We are all delighted that the application has been successful and cannot wait for work to start.  There's been months of planning to get to this stage and many more months of planning to come but it is a very exciting time for us all. This development will allow us to extend the good work we already do in conductive education and our specialist nursery."