Arvalee special school in Omagh cuts nursery hours due to demand

Jonathan Gray said he does not want to deny any child a place in the nursery

An Omagh special school principal has said he has no choice but to cut the hours for children in his nursery because of the demand for places.

The head of Arvalee School, Jonathan Gray, said he did not want to turn any children away from a place.

But that means from September, pupils in the nursery will attend for 2.5 hours a day rather than 4.5 hours.

One mother hoping to send her child to Arvalee said her son would be disadvantaged by the change.

The Education Authority (EA) has previously warned of a significant shortfall in places in special schools.

Arvalee School, which has almost 200 pupils, is the only one of six planned schools built so far on the Strule Shared Campus site in Omagh.

But from September the nursery pupils are due to be taught on the site of the school's previous building in the County Tyrone town, which was severely damaged by fire in 2012.

Arvalee School is the only school built so far of six planned on the Strule Shared Campus site in Omagh

The building has been refurbished to make it ready for pupils in September.

Many special and mainstream schools offer a "dual day" for nursery pupils, which means one group of pupils attends part time in the morning and a separate group in the afternoon.

But a plan by the EA in 2016 to impose that arrangement across all special schools was suspended after widespread opposition.

Since then, Arvalee has continued to offer full-time provision of 4.5 hours a day for nursery pupils.

But the school principal, Jonathan Gray, said he now had no choice to cut that to two separate sessions of 2.5 hours a day because of the numbers of children the school was being asked to admit.

Instead of eight nursery pupils, the school is likely to have up to 16 in nursery in September.

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"I don't want to deny any child a place in our nursery," Mr Gray told BBC News NI.

"I don't believe, however, that we can deliver everything we can deliver in four hours in two-and-a-half hours.

"The care, the learning, the support - including things like toilet training - we have to give cannot be done in two and a half hours.

"We also have an issue with our transport and how that will work.

"I just need to make sure that young children with complex needs have somewhere to go."

Caiden Bell's mother says news he will be in nursery for two hours less a day is "disheartening"

Melanie Bell's three-year-old son Caiden Pritchard is due to attend Arvalee nursery from September.

"Caiden is a very fun and lovely child to be around. He is the most loving blessing we've had but it's not easy," she told BBC News NI.

"He has a genetic disorder which is very rare - he can't feed himself, he can't dress himself and he can't get around on his own.

"He is not independent at all and he looks for adult co-operation in his everyday life."

Ms Bell told BBC News NI that the news that Caiden would be in nursery for two fewer hours each day than they had expected was disheartening.

"What are they going to be able to do for Caiden in two-and-a-half hours?" she said.

"By the time they have his personal care carried out and his feeding, what are the implications going to be for physio, speech and language, occupational therapy?

"I don't understand how this is going to work in that space of time."