Ms Julie Tonge:

If I had a magic wand, I would do something about strategic funding. We get funding on an annual basis and it all needs to be spent within a year. It can only be spent on very restricted things. The money not spent in the year gets returned. However, if that money could go into a strategic fund, we could start planning additional services, looking at the needs of the students and what other things we could put in place. For some time, we have had occupational therapists but we could be doing many other things as well. It is very difficult to get time and resources to look at other projects that could be done. The Deputy mentioned the grants that come in for projects but that money needs to be spent in a very short space of time. It would be good to have funding on a rolling basis allowing us to retain some of the funds. We could roll it up over time and do something. Perhaps at different times we could apply for additional funding to do certain things based on students' needs, which change all the time.