Council leader David Pugh has published another article letting the country know what a good job he’s been doing on the Isle of Wight.
The last article was published at the start of the July in the Guardian about the proposed Solent Offshore Energy Centre (SOEC). This one appears in the Local Government Chronicle (sadly you can’t read it as it’s behind a pay wall).
Pioneering
Entitled “Academies should have nothing to hide”, it lets all of its readers know how pioneering David and his council have been in disassembling the middle school system on the Island and replacing all council-funded High School with academies in a single stroke.
“As a result, we became the first local authority area in the country to have all of its secondary schools as trusts, voluntary aided or academy institutions”, he says.
Which read another way could say, it was all a massive experiment, because no-one had done it before.
Accountable
The bulk of the piece lays out how accountable the schools had been made. To illustrate, he points to the Children and Young People Scrutiny panel where those running the schools are questioned.
Citing the meetings in March and May 2012 which saw the schools present their views on the first year.
Claims of “tough questioning”
Cllr Pugh says, “The providers and the headteachers faced tough questioning from the panel about their targets and performance, leading to a far greater level of scrutiny taking place than their predecessor local authority schools were ever subjected to.”
Sally attended the March one of these and when I asked her about the “tough questioning”, it wasn’t what she immediately recalled.
Luckily the recordings of the meetings are online, so you can make your own mind up (below).
Accountability for all
The article ends, “Given that the academies are publicly funded and therefore should be accountable for their performance, they should have nothing to hide in coming before a publicly-held scrutiny meeting of the local authority.”
We hope that his desires for bodies that spend public funds being accountable are extended to the Isle of Wight council.
At the foot of the article, the bio reads, “David Pugh (Con) is leader of the Isle of Wight Council and a member of the Department for Education’s ministerial advisory group on the role of local authorities in education and children’s services”
Recordings of the scrutiny meetings
Cowes Enterprise College
[audio:http://www.iwight.com/council/committees/Children%20and%20Young%20People%20Scrutiny%20Panel/14-3-12/Recording/04%20-%20Provision%20of%20Secondary%20Education%20(Cowes).MP3]
Medina College
[audio:http://www.iwight.com/council/committees/Children%20and%20Young%20People%20Scrutiny%20Panel/14-3-12/Recording/04a%20-%20Provision%20of%20Secondary%20Education%20(Carisbrooke%20&%20Medina).MP3]
Carisbrooke College
[audio:http://www.iwight.com/council/committees/Children%20and%20Young%20People%20Scrutiny%20Panel/14-3-12/Recording/04a%20-%20Provision%20of%20Secondary%20Education%20(Carisbrooke%20&%20Medina).MP3]
Christ The King
[audio:http://www.iwight.com/council/committees/Children%20and%20Young%20People%20Scrutiny%20Panel/9-5-12/Recording/04(a)%20-%20Provision%20of%20Secondary%20Education%20-%20Christ%20the%20King.MP3]
Ryde Academy
[audio:http://www.iwight.com/council/committees/Children%20and%20Young%20People%20Scrutiny%20Panel/9-5-12/Recording/04(b)%20-%20Provision%20of%20Secondary%20Education%20-%20Ryde.MP3]
Sandown Academy
[audio:http://www.iwight.com/council/committees/Children%20and%20Young%20People%20Scrutiny%20Panel/9-5-12/Recording/04(c)%20-%20Provision%20of%20Secondary%20Education%20-%20Sandown.MP3]
