New special school in the Royal Borough

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has been successful in its bid to open a new special free school in the borough.

Key facts

The school will be:

for children and young people with Education, Health and Care Plans for Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs.
for children and young people aged 7 to 16 (national curriculum year groups 3 to 11).
for up to 100 children and young people.
located in a new development planned on the western edge of Windsor (identified in the Borough Local Plan as AL21 West of Windsor).
opening from September 2025 or 2026 (to be confirmed).

Where will the new school be located?

The Royal Borough's Borough Local Plan, adopted in 2022, included a site for a new special school to help meet the extra demand likely to arise from the planned new housing in the borough.

The proposed site is within a larger housing development planned on the western edge of Windsor (south of the A308 and east of Oakley Green Road). The developer of the site has submitted an outline planning application, which includes a 2.2 hectare site for a special school. You can view that planning application on the borough website here, using the following reference number 22/01354/OUT. The outline planning application has been approved (see item 105) by the council, subject to various conditions being met. A separate planning application will be required, in due course, for the school itself.

What are the next steps?

As the new school will be a free school, a competition must be held to find a 'proposer' to run the new school. This competition will now be carried out by the Department for Education (DfE), with input from the local authority.

The DfE have released their 'How to apply' guidance which sets out the process in more detail. Applicants should note that they will need to pre-register their interest by 5pm on Friday 16 June 2023. Completed applications will then need to be submitted to the DfE by noon on Thursday 31 August 2023.

The local authority has prepared its specification document, setting our our requirements for the new school. We have also published some contextual information. Both of these documents are available below and together these mean that all potential proposers will have the same information.

The Royal Borough will hold an engagement event, inviting interested proposers to discuss the school, the local context and the borough's strategic special educational needs plans.

Sponsors will then submit their applications to the DfE, before being interviewed by a panel including a representative from the Royal Borough. The DfE will then make its decision.

The timetable for this is:

Tuesday 9 May 2023 - the DfE publishes its 'How to apply' guidance for proposers.
Tuesday 9 May 2023 - the DfE and Royal Borough publish the specification document and contextual information.
May/June 2023 - the Royal Borough is running engagement event for prospective proposers (see below).
Friday 16 June 2023 - the pre-registration window for proposers closes.
Thursday 31 August 2023 - the application window for proposers closes.
end October 2023 - the DfE will complete their assessment of applications from proposers.
Winter 2023 - the DfE will interview proposers, along with a representative from the Royal Borough.
January 2024 - successful proposers will be announced.