Why does the Isle of Wight Council have such a problem with schools? 

Whatever the party in control, chaos always follows the council when it comes to Island education. 

David Pugh’s 2007-2013 Tory cabinet oversaw the catastrophic reorganisation to a two-tier system, which saw numerous schools plummet into Ofsted rated special measures, thousands of young people’s education disrupted and the impact still being felt by schools today.

Things got so bad in 2013 that Hampshire was asked to step in.

A disproportionate number of Island secondary schools required significant improvement or were in ‘special measures’. Plus, the number of young people absent from school was the worst in the country. It was in a dire state. 

In 2016, the former head of Ofsted got in trouble for saying ‘They think of it as holiday land. But it is shocking.’ He wasn’t wrong. 

Chris Whitehouse and Dave Stewart went into their 2017 election campaign promising that all schools would be rated ‘Good’ and 25 per cent of schools ‘Outstanding’.

They didn’t achieve this promise but the situation was improving. 

Just as schools were getting back on track, Covid struck. A problem, this time, not of the council’s making.

MPs warned of the ‘lost decade’ as home schooling and a disruptive return to schools saw a deepening of education equalities. Routines were shattered and learning went backwards. 

Just as schools start to find their feet and the first ‘post-Covid’ students start school, Phil Jordan’s council decides these kids haven’t had enough disruption so conjures up a plan to bulldoze a load of primary schools.  

While the kids and teachers all enjoy their well-earned summer holibobs, Phil Jordan writes in the CP his list of why he’s going to cause more chaos as soon as they come back in September. Have a lovely summer kids! 

He claims he has a ‘whole Island approach’ to solving the depressing state of education. His solution is to dig his dartboard out, stick a map of the Island’s schools on it and randomly select a load of schools to slash. That's what it seems like, anyway.

It is just going to further damage schools, spinning them into more and more chaos, disrupting the education of another generation of young people. 

The council has described this as short term disruption for long term gain but that’s the spin we were spun in 2011 and schools are still feeling the impact. 

Schools need time to just recover, catch up and be given the space to improve. 

Now, I’m not denying there’s a problem, there is!

Schools with only a handful of students are not good but we’ve got to prevent it from getting to that point.

The population imbalance on the Island is alarming. The massive increase of over 60s and the dramatic decrease of under 30s is tipping this Island closer to being a floating retirement home. What is the council doing about that?

Phil Jordan and the Alliance are reactionary in their approach with no proactive problem solving to the bigger issue.

It’s all money focused and why don’t they, like that Simpsons meme, ‘think of the children’!

The council should be focused on making the Island an attractive place to being up your family.

Instead, they’ve put all their top officials on a top secret cutting programme. 

Teachers are not the problem. They work insanely hard, going above and beyond for every student, often using their own money to buy glue sticks when they’re told there’s no budget left, working ridiculously long hours and are passionate about getting the best out of everyone.

They, as well as our young people, have been let down by poor leadership, constant disruption and disastrous decision making.

What they need is to be left alone. They just want to get on with teaching. 

For too long, young people have been let down by the Isle of Wight Council’s attempts to sort out problems with schools.

They’ve made it worse every time. The primary school closures will do that again.