A NEW secondary school to help pupils who have been permanently excluded from mainstream education look forward to a bright future is set to open in Horwich.

The private school is earmarked to open on an industrial site in Crown Lane – charging £20,000 to £40,000 a year in fees, depending on the bespoke education and support young people receive.

Achieve Training CIC is behind the plans to open Stanley House School – the school is for pupils who have been excluded from mainstream settings.

It is also for children who have learning needs, behavioural, emotional and social development needs, behavioural, emotional and social difficulties and pupils who have autism spectrum disorder. There would be 36 pupils at the school.

Trustee Robert McGuinness said: “Stanley House is an establishment to bridge the gap for the hardest to reach learners across the borough.

"We also intend reaching out to complex learners who struggle in other educational provisions.

“Stanley House is an alternative education provision that caters for full-time and part-time learners with and also without special educational needs.

“We aimed to open before Christmas however due to Covid-19 it has taken longer for the curriculum development to take place.

"We now aim to open early January.”

The school will provide vocational courses like motor mechanics alongside the core subjects.

Robert said: “We have great links with local business and agencies to provide the best learning environment for each learner.

“We have put a lot of time skills and financial investment into the development at Stanley House.

"This is to ensure learners from years 7 to 11 can have a wide range of access to our full curriculum.”

Ofsted carried out a pre-registration inspection and made recommendations to enable the school to meet independent school standards.

Mr McGuinness said: “From the report we quickly noticed we didn’t have the correct personnel in place therefore we have restructured our leadership team and now have professionals on board who specialise in education and also social care to make our provision is the best it can be.”

Ofsted had said the curriculum was not being well developed. But they felt the school’s PSHE policy would help develop pupils’ self-esteem.