| The City's Health Committee reported in June 1959 that
they wished to build an Occupation Centre for 'mental defectives' and a
Community Centre on a 0.58 acre site at Fox Hollies Road, a part of the Fox
Hollies Hall grounds which was at that time earmarked for housing. (In fact
the idea of a community centre there went back to 6th May 1947, when 1.77
acres was transferred from Parks and Estates to Education). The
estimated cost was £30,300 for 55 children. Occupation Centres provided
'elementary speech training, word recognition, music and movement, habit
training, domestic and sense training, physical training and handicrafts'.
By June 1960 the cost had gone up to £36,726, even though the
planned Community Centre had been deferred. Part of this increase in cost
was because of the need to make the available play space more attractive to
children. A year later the Occupation Centre was part of a much larger
redevelopment of the Hall grounds. Now three multi-storey flat blocks, a
tenants' room and garages were also going to be built there. In addition a
further 7.12 acres of land was going to be taken from Housing for public
open space, and this area required landscaping and levelling. A children's
playground, four hard tennis courts and fencing and gates were also to be
provided here. The tenants' room was to have an office and toilets.
Building of the Occupation centre, now to be called a
Training Centre, was started on 2nd April 1962, and the Fox Hollies Special
Training centre was opened on 9th June 1962, offering sixty places for
juniors. By 1969 twenty-seven males and twelve females under sixteen, and
nine males and thirteen females over sixteen were at Fox Hollies.
The Education (Handicapped Children) Act 1970 required
changes in how the City managed special education. The City wanted to
integrate the seven junior training centres with existing special schools:
Fox Hollies was to be combined with Uffculme. The Government did not accept
the City's case, and insisted that five of the training centres be kept
separate as special schools in their own right. Fox Hollies was one of
these.
Ironically, it was decided to move Fox Hollies Special
School in 2003. It had developed a partnership with Queensbridge School,
which had further developed its Performing Arts status. The Ofsted report of 2001
was very enthusiastic about the educational work done in the school, and
particularly the performing arts work: 'Fox Hollies School breaks the mould
of what is possible in special school and mainstream school collaboration'.
The report was damning about the school building, calling it depressing,
inadequate and substandard, and saw it as failing to provide a suitable
environment for children aged eleven to nineteen. The building was seen as a
major barrier to further improvements, and the report agreed with the idea
of locating the school nearer to Queensbridge, to where the City wanted it
to go in 1970! The school moved to its new building in December 2003, and in
August 2004 the decision was taken to try and find other uses for the old
building.
The old school was finally knocked down in the spring of
2006, and is to be replaced by a Children's Centre. As for the special
school, it is now known as the Fox Hollies and Performing Arts College, and
is located on the Highbury Community Campus on Queensbridge Road in Moseley.
It has a national reputation for performing arts. Among other links, it has
a partnership with the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Fox
Hollies and the Walker family
The origins of Fox Hollies
The Walker era
Sale catalogue, Fox Hollies Hall
Housing between
the wars
Fox Hollies
since the war
Acocks Green Carnival
Hall Green Little Theatre
Fox Hollies Forum
Fox Hollies Special School
Ninestiles School
Childhood memories of Jean Mercer
The work of Dave
Swingle
The work of Elsie Carter
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