A BIG Thank You!
I have a few thanks to make to various people:-
VentnorBlog for covering the Council meeting the other day so well - Thanks Simon & Sal!
Chris from Standards-Not-Tiers for the fantastic effort he has put into this campaign (for years”)
Jo & Terry at The Data Office for running this site for a week whilst I was away early March, and for uncovering all the mysterious changes that kept appearing on the Matrix data!
Clare, Tammy and her marshalls for organising the protests and making sure that the protests went smoothly.
All the councillors who have supported the campaign and done their very best to listen to the people that they are there to represent. I really do have the utmost of respect for you and wish that I could feel such gratitude for my own ward’s Councillor (Pugh!).
Isle of Wight Radio News for all the coverage and publicity they’ve given.
And of course all the people who have turned up to protests, and contribute to this website - the parents, grandparents, teachers, pupils, youth councillors, members of the community.
A big thanks, and well done to you all!
However, this is not over yet. The decision has been done and we cannot go back on that whether we like it or not. Schools will be closed, and we do not yet know which ones. As others have said, now is the time to ensure that this process is done smoothly in the best interests of the children and teaching staff of the Isle of Wight.
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March 27th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Kieran, that’s a really good point. I am concerned that councils around the country will look at what our own council is doing and drive through equally silly schemes. Who’s to stop them? I just posted in the Have Your Say section the letter from the National Association of Small Schools in today’s Independent newspaper which refers to the Isle of Wight. Here (point 579)
http://www.saveiowschools.co.uk/archives/21
Why not write to the paper yourself?
March 26th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Thanks Wendy for giving the link to the BBC site where Jim Knight answered some extra questions. It was very interesting to hear his response to my query about why the council was being allowed to close successful schools against direct government policy. To paraphrase: ‘We leave the decisions to councils; I can’t be responsible for what happens to all the schools in the country’. In other words, councils can act with impunity to close schools as they see fit with no systems of checks in place. It would hardly take much of Mr Knight’s time to look through a list of proposed closures and compare it to their standards, otherwise who is there to protect our schools from inept councils? Sounds like an abdication of responsibility to me.
I appreciate it might not be so relevant now, but it’s slightly scary that such influence and power over peoples’ everyday lives is not more effectively monitored.
Who watches the Watchmen?