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This by Jaimie Jehu, Totland. Ed
The trouble with the Council’s desire to close a West Wight school is that they want it too soon!
During the consultation process to deal with surplus places in the West Wight the two largest schools, suffering lowest Ofsted rating and decline in pupil numbers, have both successfully reduced their Pupil Admission Numbers (PAN) which would satisfy the surplus places problem.
The council’s “preferred” proposal
However the Council want to close a school, but not the school with the lowest intake and poorest Ofsted.
When the Weston School shut there was a local school within walking distance that could absorb all of the displaced children. You might think that the same situation applied today, but it doesn’t.
The two previous “preferred” proposals required the expansion of another school.
Issue of one particularly large year group
In fact there is a bigger issue that there is one year group in particular that simply cannot be accommodated in full by either proposal as it is a particularly large number of children.
The Council predict a fall in children numbers in the future, so I would urge them to hold off until such events occur and prevent the unnecessary disruption to the education of our current children that there shambolic proposals appear to give no regard to!
The children must come first!
