Thanks to Isle of Wight Member of Youth Parliament Robert Selby for his latest report. Ed
27 March:
Arrived at the Council at 5pm. We were in one of the meeting rooms as the chamber was being used.
Firstly we discussed whether we should move the next Youth Council meeting to the week before, due to half term, but we all voted against the motion because of exams. We did agree to start at 4pm to enable us to achieve more in meetings.
Then Andy reminded us that it is difficult to campaign at this moment because of the Local elections, pre-election period. He also said “Nothing should be done that would present any candidate with a fair or unfair advantage. Whilst Youth Council members may have individual views about the elections and candidates, any views must not be expressed in the name of the Youth Council unless the Youth Council has agreed and voted accordingly”.
This was of course reasonable, as it ensures that we are neutral and more approachable from the perspective of individuals and groups.
Children’s Survey
The main item on the agenda was the presentation of the Children’s Survey, which was a survey of 5,000 Island children aged between 8 and 15 carried out by the charity, The Children’s Society.
The survey covered a wide range of aspects of children’s lives and provides an important insight into the well-being and quality of life of Island children.
Island children not happy with schools
The results, presented by Kathy Marriot (Commissioner of Children and Family services), revealed that children were generally not happy with their schools and education.
This certainly proves there needs to be radical change in the way the academies are run (two being recently labelled inadequate by Ofsted), it was quite upsetting.
I found it hard to believe that the council have to rely on charities to produce these important statistics, failures over child protection have shown that they have not done enough to safeguard our interests.
Andy said that he would email the full presentation to the members of the IWYC so that we can review it for next meeting for short discussion as preparation for Children’s Society visit in May.
More information about the Survey.
Isle of Wight Student Union
We then split up into our different select committees (Education and Employment for me), to fill out our work plans. Tessa, Elspeth, Charlie, Will and I discussed what we wanted to achieve this year and how we would achieve this.
We came to the conclusion that we wanted to focus on two specific areas, to campaign to improve Island education, and to ensure that more qualified apprentices get full-time work. I proposed that we create a pressure group to campaign for the first issue.
They all agreed and the Isle of Wight Student Union was officially set up. Please follow our progress on Facebook and Twitter.
I am very excited, and have fulfilled my second manifesto pledge. We returned and all committees presented their plans. The meeting finished at 7pm, It was very good and I feel we have established real focus and clarity in the work we do.
