We’ve just had the very briefest view of the Council’s school results (for some reason the council PR staff didn’t give us the information in advance that they gave to other media sources) and frankly, we are pretty worried.

There’s an inconsistency in the number of questionnaires they say were distributed.

In a press release on 27 Feb, they said there were “25,000 questionnaires seeking views were distributed to all Island parents, teachers, governors and pre schools.”

The executive summary just released says “a short self-completion questionnaire was circulated to over 14,000 parents, governors & school staff on the Isle of Wight.”

On page five of the report they say “The questionnaires were distributed by IOW Council to approximately 11,000 parents, governors & school staff on the Isle of Wight with copies also being made available at public meetings, in libraries, help centres and other locations across the Island.”

Now which one is it? 25,000; 14,000 or 11,000?

UPDATE: We’ve had a lovely call from the Council Press Office to let us know that the 25,000 figure included all of the surveys printed; 14,000 was the number posted to people; 11,000 – well, they admit that was a mistake. They called it a ‘typo’.

It’s all about the numbers
Surely the bread and butter of a statistical company is the understanding of numbers isn’t it?

It’s pretty worrying if the council — who must have read the report over many times before it was released — and the company charged with working out views of the Island regarding the future of our children’s education cannot even get a consistent number for the questionnaires that were distributed.

We’re going to approach the rest of the document with caution, especially after the council told anyone who would listen at the start of all of this that the Island would lose £7 million in Government funding if the ’surplus’ school places were not reduced – which was proven to not be the case last week.

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