We went along to Totland on Saturday to see and take part in the first Island demonstration against the proposed Primary School closures.
As mentioned earlier, it attracted over 200 people which was pretty impressive given the cold and windy day and short notice. It wove its way through the streets of Totland and Freshwater, resting at the Freshwater Rec where some people gave speeches.
We got to speak to Jill Wareham – ex-Lib Dem Island councillor previously responsible for education – just after she addressed those gathered.
Her central message – Contact your local councillors well in advance of when they will be voting on the primary schools decision due to be made in March. She feels that it’s important that councillors don’t abstain, as this may allow the measures through.
As we’ve commented before, when councillors hear or see that the people who elected them object – and might not again in the future – they act, otherwise there’s a strong chance that they might not. So there’s logic in her approach.
What are the underlying reasons for closing schools?
When we asked what she thought the underlying reasons for the closures was, she replied, “The meetings I’ve been to, it appears to me that it’s finance driven, it’s not about standards, in fact the meeting I went to, I think it was only mentioned once about standards.”
She went further to tell us that she thought that the council were “really financially struggling,” as they’d “draw on their reserves.”
Jill also had some ideas as to how it could have been differently, “Small schools have been subsidised, but there are ways of getting around this … we could federate schools, we could bring in pre-schools – which are often in mobile classrooms – into the schools, therefore you wouldn’t have so many surplus places.”
She left the killer punch for the end, “I question their honesty, why they’re closing these schools.” [audio:http://otw-audio.s3.amazonaws.com/jill-wareham-question-their-honesty.mp3]
We tried hard protect against the wind, but some of the pesky stuff still got through creating noise on the recording – sorry about that.
Listen to the whole interview
[audio:http://otw-audio.s3.amazonaws.com/Jill-Wareham-Interview-Totland-Schools-Demo.mp3]
