Ventnor Blog

Rebecca Tuck from the Isle of Wight Council has been in touch this week, asking us to advertise a position for an afternoon School Crossing Patrol in Ventnor (more on that later).

It reminded us of Ventnorian, Wendy Marshall who many of you will know, picked up the IW Radio People’s People Award for Crossing Patrol Person of the Year in 2007 last year.

We caught up with Wendy a while ago to talk about her work and the awards.
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Tomorrow sees the launch of the very first RiverFest.

It takes place in Newport by the quayside and surrounding river area.

There are tons of activities taking place over the day including a six mile river walk, street theatre, stilt walkers and fire show (with the amazing Matt Splatt) and even a mini beast safari. (more…)

Following the announcement yesterday of the concert being held next week at Cowes Yacht Haven to celebrate the life of Anthony Minghella, we hear today that his sister, Jazz singer Edana Minghella, will also be making a special appearance at the concert. (more…)

Anyone planning to joining the Circus Skills and Stilt Walking classes, being held at The Venntor Youth Centre, please be aware of changes to the start date.

The course, which is being run by Matt Splat of Ryde Extreme Performers, who you might remember from the excellent Circus Variety Show on Easter Monday, starts on Saturday 10th May.

Each week between 11am-12.30pm, he’ll be teaching a range of circus skills, including stilt walking. (more…)

A new facility that will provide support for families with children under the age of 5 is being officially opened on 1 May. (more…)

If you haven’t got your tickets yet for the forthcoming fundraiser and awareness gig for the St George’s Dragon project, make sure you sort it out before they get snapped up.

After the short presentation about the project, you will be entertained by the brilliant Wild Oats and Lucid, two excellent Island bands who will certainly put on a good show.
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Fantastic news reaches us this morning that St George’s PMLD School is Newport has just announced that TV presenter Chris Packham, has agreed to become a patron of Dragon.

What better day to make the announcement than on St George’s Day.

Chris said today

“I’m delighted to be asked to support Dragon by being a patron, St George’s is a terrific school full of superb kids.

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This Thursday (24 April), the National Union of Teachers is staging a national 24hr walk-out in response to the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommended pay increase for school teachers. The strike is affecting a small number of schools on the Isle of Wight. (more…)

Make sure you get this one in your diaries. Coming up in June is an awareness night for the great new Dragon project coming out from St George’s School in Newport.

The aim of the night is to inform and entertain.

You can learn all about the work that has been going on at St George’s PMLD School over the last year or so and discover the incredible plans they have for the future.
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Thanks to Platform One for sending through details of this forthcoming drum clinic.

We know that there are lots of musicians out there who will be interested to attend the workshop, so if you have a budding young drummer in the house, make sure you send them this posting (you can use the ‘Email This Story To A Friend‘ link at the bottom of the article).
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Neighbourhood Learning in Ventnor is a project delivered by the Arts Unit in partnership with The Adult and Community Learning Service which brings a series of arts based courses for adults to Ventnor.

A new series of courses are about to start (see full details below), so please come and join in – have fun, meet people and learn new skills. The courses are becoming increasingly popular and places are limited, so you do need to phone to book a place: 817288
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We hear from the Council Chambers that Jim Knight, Government Schools Minister has announced today that the Isle of Wight has been successful in its bid for seven new diplomas.

The diplomas will be in:

Business and Advertising, Media, Engineering, Hair & beauty, Hospitality, IT, Environmental & land based studies.

We’ll bring you more info on these tomorrow.

Update:
Previous title: David Pugh Recommending Option Three: 31 Schools To Close?

Thanks to the council press office for the quick call, pointing out that David Pugh hasn’t said he’d recommend option three, simply that he’d recommend two tier tonight.
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Standards-Not-Tiers would like to thank everyone who braved the rain to march for what we all know is right.

I know that it will be very late in the day but would you all please please please make an extra special effort to come to County Hall on Wednesday evening. Fred Dinenage - ITV Meridian presenter is coming over to do their news programme live from the reception area at County Hall and he will talk to any of us that would like to tell the rest of the South what we think of the Council…no obscenities though!
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Many parents and other people have contacted Andrew Turner the Island’s MP saying that they felt that the recent schools consultation has been flawed for a variety of reasons. Islanders have told him that they feel information given was either unclear or subsequently proved inaccurate.

Others have complained that the consultation questionnaire was too complex for them to complete in full – as the form said they were required to do - or that there was no way on the form to represent their views accurately and that advice changed during the consultation process.
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A short while back we were contacted by a previous resident of St Catherine’s Open Air School, Brinley Davies who now lives in from St. Malo, France.

He is looking for others who may’ve been at the school the same time, read on to find out more.

I wonder if you can help me. I have tried many times via various web sites to find any information regarding St Catherine’s Open Air School.

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The last public demo in objection to the proposed mass closure of at least 22 primary schools and one middle school (incidentally - the most highly equipped school on the Wight, Nodehill) took place in Newport today.

According to the Police, there were around 500 people on the march which departed Church Litten at 11am and the Wall of Protest made its way down to County Hall. In our view, these were pretty good numbers given the horrid weather, lack of support from certain quarters and the fact that the results were already in for the survey.
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Make your voice heard tomorrow on the Wall of Protest Schools March taking place in Newport from 10.30am.

The weather forecast is wet, but don’t let a little thing like the rain stop you from showing the council how you feel about the proposed plans to close at least 23 schools.

There are many reasons to go along on Saturday including …
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If you are unhappy in any way, shape or form regarding the schools reforms, make your voice heard this Saturday in the last public demonstration before the Council make their decision next Wednesday.

There are many reasons to go along on Saturday including … (more…)

Incomplete School Questionnaires Used In Analysis
As we brought up before, it seemed to us that there wasn’t something quite right about the report on the school survey. The thing that initially jumped out was an inconsistency about the number of surveys issued, which we now understand have been corrected.

That led us to look a little deeper into the numbers, where we noticed that each of the questions were showing different numbers of responses. A bit strange we thought.

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Last week we reported Loss Of £7m Govt Funding To Schools Not True. In order to provide balanced reporting, we requested a statement from the Council, which raised further questions for us.

We raised our concerns with the press office and in an unofficial statement, a member of the press office stated that we were getting our figures mixed up and that David Pugh has never said that the loss of £7m related to surplus places.

We were a little perturbed to hear this coming out from the press office, as many people that we had spoken to thought that David Pugh had stated many times in public and on IW Radio that if we don’t close primary schools to reduce surplus school places, we will lose £7 million funding from the government.
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If you’re following the schools reforms issue closely, make sure that you tune into BBC South Today who should be covering the ’schools consultation’ story from 6.30pm tonight.

The results of the survey have now been released and the council meeting where the fate of the Island education system takes place in just over a weeks time (by the way, we will be reporting live from County Hall for those of you unable to attend in person that night, so make sure you stay tuned into VentnorBlog on the 19th).
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People across the Isle of Wight Have Voted Heavily in Favour of retaining schools within local communities.

People who responded to the Council’s questionnaire are this morning waking up to the realisation that their views are not being taken seriously as the council chooses to use their representations to press for a two tier system which under the Councils model will lead to the closure of many rural primary schools and the creation of much larger schools all round including 1800 place secondary schools that are almost twice the size of what are accepted as reasonable in most other local authorities.
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Of the 74 schools on the Isle of Wight, currently only 32 of them have School Travel Plans.

We noticed that a question had come up in Parliament yesterday in the written answer section, asked by Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet, Conservative),

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