Author: IW Council Press Office
Council Keen to State Facts During Education Consultation
Wednesday, 23rd January, 2008 at 3:00 pm, Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight Council is stressing its proposed educational reforms are about raising educational standards and not making money. The local authority, which has launched its latest consultation over the future of Island education, has explained how each of its proposals fit in with strict new Government criteria for capital funding for primary school buildings.
The council must address several areas in order to qualify for millions of pounds in future funding for primary schools. In late 2007, the government announced requirements for all education authorities to produce a strategic plan for the modernisation of primary school buildings. The government has made money available to fund this work, but there is strict criteria that must be met to unlock this and to provide the necessary funding to invest in improvements in education on the Island.
The criteria requires that the council reduces the number of unfilled - or surplus - places at primary schools to under 10%. The September 2007 admission figures for entry into primary schools shows 29% of places unfilled. This means unless action is taken to address the problem, the council would not qualify for this funding.
At the same time, the government’s Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has also announced a reduction in the automatic annual grant to the council for ongoing improvements to existing primary school buildings - down from over £10m (in 2007/08) to just £3m (2008/09). This reduction makes it more vital for the council to submit a viable bid to the government to fund even the most basic maintenance.
Failure to produce a plan to address the problems of surplus places would mean the council will miss out on the funding and will not be able to maintain small primary schools, and children could be educated in sub-standard buildings. The local authority would need to find several million pounds to make up the shortfall, which could either mean diverting money used elsewhere for education, and potential increases in council tax.
Isle of Wight Council Leader Cllr David Pugh, said: “There is much misinformation circulating that the council has already agreed to sell off vacated school buildings for property developments. This is simply not true, and many of the buildings should they be vacated by individual schools may be used for other educational or community benefit. The council has a duty to consider all viable options for the future of vacated buildings as determined by its Community Asset Strategy, which is currently under development.
“We welcome the fact the government has made us confront this difficult issue which the Island should have faced up to years ago. Falling pupil numbers have resulted in an unacceptable increase in our unfilled places over a number of years, and until now the IW Council has refused to tackle this issue - instead using up to £2m of our central resources to prop up unviable schools.
“As we said at the start, there are many harsh realities for local residents to face if we are to make the kind of improvements in educational standards we need on the Island. We recognise people will be upset at potential school closures but Islanders need to understand there is a bigger picture here, and these closures are for valid reasons with the long term aim of giving children better opportunities in the future.”
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January 23rd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
This is amazing. So now they are purporting that closing 22 primary schools is about raising standards, but then go on to say that if they don’t reduce the number of surplus places they will only receive £3m next year for doing up primary school buildings. To me that sounds like it’s down to money.
Raising standards is not just about the environment that children are taught in (although this does have some bearing).
It is about the standard of education being delivered by the teachers.
Wake up Isle of Wight Council, your PR disaster is about to sink you.
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Of course this all about money. Our organisation Standards-Not-Tiers has been involved with the developement of the councils plans which until the arrival of the Pugh-Wells combination, seemed to make at least some sense. At no time were large scale school closures part of the planning.
Team Pugh-Wells must have missed the publication of the Conservative green paper published in November last year. Their plans seem to have ignored their own party’s political lead on this. Maybe they are about to breakaway to form their own party (in another country hopefully!)
This is a link to the document but I have lifted the most pertinent bits for your interest. A press release on this will follow.
Allow smaller schools and more intimate learning environments to be established to respond to parental demands.
Parents need to feel that they have a stronger bond with their child’s education and the school community. We want to help every parent be actively involved with their child’s education, making it easier to work effectively with the school to provide the best opportunities.
One of the most noticeable features in education over the past ten years is that schools have become much bigger. The number of secondary schools with over 1,000 pupils rose by 42 per cent (from 1,270 to 1,807 schools) between 1996/07 and 2004/05. Over the same period, the number of pupils being taught in schools with over 1,500 pupils also doubled from 261,000 to 536,000.45
Although there are, of course, excellent large schools, on average, discipline is worse in larger schools.
Over 9 per cent of the school population of schools with more than 1,000 pupils suffer from exclusion compared with 3.7 per cent in smaller schools – and, whereas the number of permanent exclusions has decreased in smaller schools over recent years, the number of permanent exclusions in schools of over 1,000 pupils has risen.46 Meanwhile, research in the USA has indicated that school size can have a considerable influence on student achievement, particularly for students of low socio-economic status. Cities like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia are moving towards small school models.47
These cities are showing that educational opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds can be improved by providing schools with which pupils find it easier to identify and in which heads and teachers find it easier to establish personal relationships with students. Accordingly, we intend to require local authorities with existing, failing large schools to examine the possibility of dividing those schools into smaller, autonomous schools, using the facilities of existing campuses.
We also anticipate that, in many cases, New Academies will operate as smaller schools. The greater freedoms we envisage for new entrants, and the less onerous financial entry requirements, are likely to generate new schools in areas which would, before, have been considered unviable. And lower entry costs means it is easier to envisage a new school being viable with fewer pupils.