Ventnor Blog

Isle of Wight Council is organising a series of meetings from Monday 28 April as part of the latest phase of its education reforms. Eight meetings will be held across the Island where representatives from individual schools, pre-schools and governing bodies will be invited. (more…)

Good to see some responses in today’s Indepedent newspaper by two residents of the Isle of wight, Wendy Varley and Rupert Besley, to Steve Beynon’s belated letter to the paper which appeared last week.

Follow the link to read in full. The fourth letter ‘SMALL CLASSES BEST’ by Dr Richard House, Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton University is also an interesting read for those who chose to send their children to SMALL rural schools.

Many thanks to Island parent, Wendy Varley for sending in her response to Steve Beynon’s letter in The Independent this week. Ed

The appearance in yesterday’s The Independent of a letter from Steve Beynon, Director of Children’s Services at Isle of Wight Council, taking issue with the article they ran on 13 March about the schools reorganisation begs the question: if he was unhappy with the article, why did he wait a month to raise it with them? (more…)

Many people have been asking, now the decision has been made by councillors to go with the revised option, a two tier education system, what is the next stage?

Just this issue was discussed at Cabinet meeting last night.

It was reported that a series of discussion meetings with head teachers, governors, and pre-school leaders were being held during April and May.

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Anyone who reads the County Press will have noticed in February and March, the three full page and one half page ad placed by Standards Not Tiers.

The purpose of the adverts was to raise awareness of the proposed changes to the education system.

Members of Standards Not Tiers have worked tirelessly over the last few years to see an increase in the standard of education on the Wight, and worked flat out over the public consultation period.
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The most telling and we think, shameful vote conducted at the schools reform debate last Wednesday was in reaction to when Cllr Deborah Gardiner suggested that the public question time should be increased, as so many people in the public gallery were keen to raise points concerning the future of their children’s education.

After the chairman, Roger Mazillius, asked her to quantify how much longer it should be, Cllr Gardiner made the suggestion of a total 30 minutes - 15 minutes longer than the time normally set aside for public questions.
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We’re sure you’ve all been on the edge of your seats, we certainly have.

After nearly three hours of discussion, with lots of typing from Simon (he’s a star!) the final verdict has arrived and the majority vote is for the fifth option, submitted by David Pugh at the last minute.

Full details of the fifth option can be read in our previous posting.

Updates will be added as they come in. Refresh your browser every 5 to 10 minutes to read the numbered updates.

18:06 - prayers over

Chairman reads a statement of condolence to Anthony Minghella

Cllr Price & Millar not present
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Fred Dineage will be broadcasting live from County Hall tonight and is interested in hearing comments from concerned parents.

We also understand that BBC South will be live, as well as IW Radio and BBC Radio Solent.

We will, of course, be reporting live from inside the Council Chamber to bring you the latest as it happens.

As with past meetings, we’ve felt that a busy public gallery really focuses the councillors on level of public feeling.

News just in is that a new option for schools will be outlined tonight by David Pugh.

Talk in the council chambers in the last half hour is that a new option (detailed below) - two tiers but with less closures, will be announced.

The council are said to have been in talks with the schools minister and have sourced funding to help support the rural schools.

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We’ve been meaning to post an update on our piece about the position of Ventnor’s two county councillors — Cllr Fitzgerald-Bond and Cllr Scoccia — on the closure of Island schools.

We’d half written it ages back, then ebod has prompted us, though a comment on the original posting into telling you what we found out. We wanted to give them the long amount of time to reply, so given the vote is today, we thought we’d better get the piece out to you.
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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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Last week we covered the extensive piece that Steve McCormack published in The Independent on the proposed reforms of schools on the Island.

We’d done our reporting of the coverage on the basis of the online version of the article.
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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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Next Wednesday sees a full council meeting at County Hall. We will be covering this meeting with live reports coming straight from the council chamber.

The biggest issue on the agenda is undoubtedly the schools reforms.
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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…)

Thanks for the tip from Wendy that the front page of The Independent Educational supplement has a three quarter page article on the planned changes to the educational system on the Island.

It’s a pretty extensive article which brings in quotes from many of the major players in the debate and is well worth a read, giving an overview of the current state of play as per last week.
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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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Hold the press!

The long-awaited statement is in from the council on the question we raised with them. There’s a considerable ‘but’ at the end.

It is as follows … (more…)

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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During the day on Monday, a decision was made by Cllr Alan Wells that Christ The King College should be established starting 1 Sept 2008. This was carried out BEFORE the public release of the results of the school survey.

The decision was made under delegated powers, that is, there was no public debate about it, or public record of how the decision was made - just that it was made.
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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.