Angry Chale resident, Dave Botha informs us that he has made an official complaint against the Isle of Wight Council to the Local Government Ombudsman.
The cause of his beef focuses on the public consultation for the proposed school changes held last year and the decision taken by the Cabinet to close Chale Primary School if the Conservatives are voted in at the next election (June this year).
There are several items of complaint including a claim that research quoted in Paper B, in the Report to Cabinet 24 November 2008, Appendix K, namely Spielhofer et al 2002 specifically refers to research in secondary schools and is therefore inappropriate and misleading.
When Mr Botha complained to the IW Council about this, a response from Schools Project Manager, Alex Moffatt in January 2009 claimed that the Council rebuts the suggestion that this research is inappropriate and misleading.
However, as Mr Botha pointed out in his response a week later back to Alex Moffatt,
To quote (Mortimore et al 1988) and claim it represents the findings of (Spielhofer et al., fourteen years later), is definitely misleading.
The (Spielhofer et al 2002) research conclusion specifically does not agree with (Mortimore) about the effect of size on Primary schools.
Your Appendix K contains text copied from (Spielhofer et al 2002) research relating to Secondary Schools, this text is explicitly not relevant to Primary schools and is misleading to the public.
Your Appendix K contains untrue presentation and dishonest inference.
Included in his complaint to the LGO, Mr Botha added that he had been left feeling disenfranchised; that the views of the public had been ignored and that the facts had been obscured by misrepresentation.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on this one and will obviously fill you in when we have more news.
Read all VentnorBlog coverage on the proposed schools reforms.
