In this week’s IW County Press you’ll find a special supplement (inside the Weekender section) dedicated not to weddings or fitness or gardening, but Statutory Education Notices.
This is the council’s reorganisation proposals, school by school, laid out in tiny type, in alphabetical order, and that it requires a supplement to carry all those notices (64 of them in total) gives an idea of the massive scale of the plans.
Interestingly, no schools will be “closed”; they are to be “discontinued” (a less emotive word?). So all middle schools are due to be discontinued, as will the five high schools (to become “new” secondary schools through the competition that’s being held; public meetings to hear from proposers are next week), and the primary schools that are due to amalgamate as new schools.
An impassioned campaign by the Chale community to save Chale Primary School has fallen on deaf ears: it is due to be “discontinued” altogether, with displaced pupils offered a choice of Niton or Brighstone Primary as an alternative.
Chillerton & Rookley, Godshill and Wroxall primaries will be “discontinued” to eventually become part of a new amalgamated primary (though initially remaining on their own sites).
In Ventnor St Wilfrid’s, St Boniface and St Margaret’s primaries are to be discontinued, replaced by a single new Catholic and C of E primary school.
East Cowes and Whippingham primaries are to be replaced by an amalgamated new school.
There are notices flagging up the competition proposals for the seven new schools (the reincarnation of the five high schools as secondaries to take pupils from age 11; and the East Cowes/Whippingham, and Godshill area amalgamations), but a look at who is bidding for which school deserves a blog entry of its own.
The statutory notices will be posted outside the affected schools today. There are between four and six weeks to object to, or make comments on, any of the proposals (that’s a deadline of 7 or 21 August, depending on what you are commenting on).
Take a look at the detail, and let us know what you think.
