Cabinet members are expected to agree to close a troubled special school at a meeting next week.
Brighton and Hove City Council has already stopped sending pupils to Homewood College, in Queensdown School Road, Brighton.
At the end of the 2023-24 financial year, at the end of March, the school had a £709,000 deficit, the biggest of any state school in Brighton and Hove.
And at its last full inspection by the education watchdog Ofsted in December 2021, Homewood was rated inadequate and placed in special measures.
The cabinet is being asked to approve the closure of the school at the end of next month. The move will require the Education Secretary Briget Phillipson to revoke an order to turn the school into an academy.
A report to the cabinet said: “The council has considered alternative options, including attempts to improve the school’s performance through support from the Beckmead Academy Trust.
“However, this support was only short-term and did not lead to sustainable improvement.”
In September, the council’s cabinet member for finance, Jacob Taylor, agreed to a four-week representation period before the cabinet meeting scheduled for Thursday 14 November. No comments were received.
The earlier public consultation attracted 19 responses. Three people supported closing the school, six were unsure and ten – or 53 per cent – did not want Homewood to close.
Before the closure process started, the school took 40 to 50 pupils a year, aged 11 to 16, with social, emotional and mental health needs.
The remaining year 10 and 11 pupils were assigned places elsewhere, including at St George’s House, in Dyke Road, Brighton, and Ropemaker’s Academy, run by the Beckmead Trust, in Hailsham.
Most of the 10 to 14-year-old pupils switched to the pupil referral unit in Connaught Road, Hove.
The cabinet is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 2pm next Thursday (14 November). The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
£700,000 is a pretty damning amount for a school’s survival.
As the school has already closed with all staff being made redundant on 31st August 2024, no students and the buildings assets stripped already I would assume that the decision to ‘close’ the school is a foregone conclusion!
Since when have Children In B&H gone to School in Hailsham
And as for The School in Dyke Road-St Georges, since when did that close and re-open so quickly to accommodate Children
And didn’t realise there was a Unit at Connaught Road School, think more Schools will have units attached to them if the Schools are being Closed by Council like they are at the moment.