At last week’s Isle of Wight council Executive committee meeting, members voted in favour of continuing with the consultation on school places for 11-16 year olds and post-16 pupils.
This followed a call-in of the decision made by Executive on 9th December (see coverage).
GCSE results
Back in August last year, the Isle of Wight council reported that GCSE results for 2014 had slipped back to pre-2011 figures.
The draft paper on the consultation includes the long-awaited school-level 2014 GCSE results, so we can now see how schools fared against each other.
Cowes Enterprise led the way
The paperwork reveals the percentage of pupils achieving 5+ A*-C including English and maths (NB: National Average = 58%).
It’s worth noting these are still provisional figures – final figures will be released later this month.
As you can see from the table below, Cowes Enterprise College led the way on the Island, with 58% of pupils achieving 5+ A*-C GCSEs including English and maths.
Click on image to see larger versions
Other observations
The draft consultation paper is quite long and many will not be inclined to read it thoroughly, but according to an education scrutineer, some observations include,
- Sixth form text and tables do not reflect a single sixth form for Medina and Carisbrooke (e.g. page 13 states 7 ‘separate’ sixth forms)
- There is no reference to academy plans at Carisbrooke (or Medina)
- There appears to be no link to the Island plan – housing changes (e.g. Pennyfeathers) (only uses primary places model)
- There’s no modeling of changes in parental preference due to improvements at some schools
- No consideration of potential changes to admissions criteria has been included (any secondary school could change to use over-subscription criteria other than nearest – e.g. specialisms, lottery…)
- Finally, there’s no reference to geographical distribution of the 150 Island students attending mainland post-16 education, and it’s unclear how these have been treated
For full detail, see the draft consultation paper below. Click on the full screen icon to see larger version.
Image: comedynose under CC BY 2.0
