As readers will remember, recently GCSE results for the Isle of Wight were released and for many it was not welcome news.
The Isle of Wight sat at the bottom of the table of all local authorities for pupils achieving four A* to C in any five subjects and only one place higher in the table for pupils achieving four A* to C with Maths and English.
Chief Executive of the council, Steve Beynon told On The Wight that the school leadership were responsible, not the council, much to the surprise of readers.
On the Wight got in touch with leader of the council, who was instrumental in the school reorganisation, David Pugh to hear his views on the abysmal results. He responded the same day (the delay in publishing is down to us).
School-by-school factors lead to differences
He told On The Wight, “As we said in August when the provisional results were announced, the poor performance at some secondary schools offset the extremely good results at others.
“There are clearly school-by-school factors which led to these differentials, rather than an Islandwide impact as a result of the structural change. Christ the King, Ryde Academy and Cowes Enterprise College thrived during the transition period, and there are lessons to be learned from how they approached the period of change and drove up standards at the same time.”
“Unacceptable that the other three failed”
He contionued, “It is unacceptable that the other three failed to do the same, which resulted in a disappointing average for the Island in overall terms. Discussions have already taken place to understand what has gone wrong and agree what support is required to help those schools with poor results rise to the standards of those who are returning excellent results.
“The governors of these schools must now take steps which demonstrate leadership changes, where appropriate – and the IW Council’s Scrutiny Panel will shortly be requiring them to set out their action plans for improvement.”
State school was top performing
He went on to say, “The top performing school in terms of GCSEs is Christ the King College, which is the only Island ‘state’ school to have thus far had pupils in the same learning environment for the full secondary range (11 to 16 year olds). This shows that the continuity offered by the new two-tier system is a blueprint from which all schools can succeed.
“The task now is to help ensure all schools similarly flourish in this new system.”
Disclosure: We received Cllr Pugh’s response nine days ago.
Image: alamosbasement under CC BY 2.0
