Last Thursday, representatives from Standards Not Tiers attended the schools reorganisation public meeting at Cowes Yacht Haven. SNT have published a report of the meeting on their Web site and we have their permission to reproduce extracts on VentnorBlog to share with our readers. Ed
Introduction
The meeting was poorly attended. There were only 12 attendees. We were five minutes late and apparently Danny, the MC, had been told to close the meeting early on account of the low numbers and the expectation of fewer questions.
I didn’t know that this had been planned and when they eventually tried to close the meeting, despite there clearly being more questions to be asked, they said that the meeting could continue but informally only.
As that would have meant it being off the tape I did not agree and insisted that they restart the tape. Danny was most unhappy and although others that I asked afterwards thought he was just rather irritated, I thought he seemed aggressive. He actually told me that I had asked more than my fair share of questions already.
… In our opinion the informal consultation was clearly designed to frighten and sap everyone’s strength and the formal consultation has become a push over with hardly anyone engaging because they think the decision has already been made, which it has not.
This was likened to an artillery barrage prior to the infantry going in to surgically eradicate the remaining enemy troops left battered and wounded by the initial bombardment.
I’d describe the meeting as edgy but at the same time the officers had answers, albeit not very good ones, but answers nonetheless, to most of the questions and anything they couldn’t answer was deemed a matter for the politicians and needed to be put to the formal consultation formally…to which I said that I thought that the questions and the answers given at a formal meeting like this one, were supposed to form part of the formal consultation formally anyway, which was why it was all being recorded. Carrying on the meeting “informally” seemed to me to be a complete waste of time.
We did not notice any press or media presence at the meeting. Maybe they, like many members of the public have decided that such meeting are not worthy of their time.
….
Single Transfer and Size of the new Secondary Schools
Keith Simmonds stated the “fact” that single transfer will be more productive than multiple transfers. I was forced to interject and inform him that this was not a fact and that there was no research to show this to be the case.
He conceded that this was true but said that there was always an opposing view to any assertion.
Another attendee asked whether single transfer would not create far more traumatic transfers for eleven year olds as result of the large size of the proposed secondary schools as against the small size of some of our primaries.
She cited the example of a child at a new 1FE Sandown primary school, transferring to the massive 12FE Sandown High School. That child would be going from a year group of 30 to one of 360 overnight.
Mr Simmonds was not sympathetic saying that the new secondary schools would not be particularly big. He offered no answer except to explain that objections like that were a matter of policy and more a political point that should be raised as part of the formal consultation under the heading “objection to change”…I think that was what the lady concerned was trying to do! Keith Simmonds seemed to me to be very clear however…12FE is not big!
(SNT Comment: We did not really have the opportunity to counter this. We do however have a broad body of evidence to support the view that our secondary schools are already too big and making them bigger is likely to cause a decline in standards. We strongly believe that Island results are partly a consequence of the size of year groups at GCSE and in line with the results produced by other schools on the mainland (predominantly two tier) that have similar size year elevens. We know of at least one large urban authority that despite having many smaller secondary schools of 6FE or less, are looking at small successful secondary schools elsewhere for inspiration and guidance – so why aren’t we?)
…
And Finally”¦
There were many things that were deemed a matter for the politicians and we were told needed to be put to the formal consultation formally by formally writing to a formal part of the formal consultation but really something that could not be answered adequately at a formal public meeting that was about to close (run out of recording time / inconvenience officers / make the sound engineers late for their after gig party) and become informal (sigh of relief).
Amongst other things, some already mentioned, these were interesting:
Q: Parents with children starting in 2010 but no others in the system have not been consulted?
A: And”¦?
Statement by Mr Simmonds: Apparently the LA has a statutory responsibility to respond to parental demand for successful and popular schools by expanding them.
You can read the report in full over on the SNT Website.
Cartoon reproduced with permission by Island cartoonist, Rupert Besley. Check out his website, he’s got some brilliantly topical cartoons on there.
