Alan Milburn, North Yorkshire County Council’s head of pupil and parent services gives an assurance that although the proposed closure of Welburn Hall Special School will be cost effective, ‘we would not consider it if we did not think it would be the best thing for the children in the long run’. The wife of the managing director of a major chain of North East Stores, Mrs Maggie Boyes, whose daughter Janet attends Welburn, is the latest to make her views known against the closure plan. She says the family will not be able to cope if the school closes as part of a re-organisation of special school provision by North Yorkshire County Council.
Darlington Northern Echo, January 2, 1997

Broxbourne Secondary School in Lea Valley, Hertfordshire expects to have two lifts installed by May. The stair-walking wheelchair previously used by disabled pupils is so old it is beyond repair and in any case it takes 20 minutes for it to negotiate steps to the upper floors. Margaret McKenzie, head of learning support at Broxbourne, said: ‘Things just weren’t good enough. The lift will make life so much easier for disabled pupils. They are one more thing to improve access.’
Hoddesdon and Broxbourne Mercury, January 31, 1997

The parents of Jacob Smith, one of many pupils being integrated from Barnardo’s Princess Margaret School, Taunton, say that Somerset Education Authority has let them down. Angie and Marcus Smith want Jacob, who has cerebral palsy, to go to his local secondary school but the LEA say he must travel to a school which has been especially adapted for disabled pupils. Somerset’s deputy education officer, John Rose, said: ‘We have put up £200,000 in the past year to adapt schools and it is an on-going programme but we can’t do every school because we do not have the resources’.
Somerset County Gazette, January 31, 1997