Recommendation 21

The secure school will be registered as an SCH, although, designed with 49 places, it will be significantly bigger than a SCH.71 One consequence of its registration as a SCH is that the manager could refuse to accept a particular child. We asked the Ministry and HMPPS how they are managing the risk of children being refused a place. HMPPS told us that it is working in partnership with Oasis to agree the criteria on use of places. It expects the secure school to take a broad range of children (boys and girls), but it also described how placement decisions will be made in line with the existing statutory obligation to do 62 Q46 63 Q44–Q45, Q49 64 Q26; C&AG’s Report, para 3.10 65 Q29–Q30 66 Q26 67 Q25; C&AG’s Report, para 3.12, 3.15 68 Q32–Q33; C&AG’s Report Figure 13, para 3.11 69 Q32 70 Q33 71 Q49 Secure training centres and secure schools 15 what is in the best interests of the child.72 HMPPS told that if placing a child in the new Medway secure school is not in the child’s best interest, they would expect to look for an alternative, whether that is a SCH, STC or YOI.73 The Ministry and HMPPS told us that they expect the Funding Agreement to facilitate this partnership approach to placing children although HMPPS has not yet set out how it intends to do so.74 Evaluation