Island Education

The current education system as redesigned and focussed by a fan of the 1950s ends up with over 90% of pupils feeling like failures! 

Surely the point of education is to prepare people for the future as successful members of society. This is not just jobs, or an academic agenda it should cover  passions, professions at all levels, and culture, giving everyone a stake in a tolerant diverse society

As a recent teacher, and parent and with long experience of working with business I look on the current education system with amazement. Carefully designed by the Conservative Government for the most academic children, branding everyone else as failures we wonder why so many children switch off and fail to reach their potential or parents reach for their wallet and the nearest tutor.

Teachers, and school management, work within a restrictive set of focussed targets with an emphasis on limited skills to the exclusion of all else. There is a nod to disadvantaged pupils but when you measure success as passing rigid  academic exams is it any surprise that pupils who live in the real world don't bother. And the teachers subject to a relentless straitjacket of educational practice burn out and run away early, while experienced professionals from the real world arrive and walk away rapidly. 

Education in the UK needs money, people and importantly a reset. Here on the Isle of Wight we could take a different approach as we are already are seen as a failing county with rural, isolated communities not engaged with education. The Conservative Council promised to improve the system but deliver more upheavals including dismembering local 6th form education, and then wonder why they continue to fail. 

I've been pointing out the dreadful approach to centralisation for 6th form education and the dismemberment of successful schools for some years. Although the lack of engagement from Council and MP is no surprise I suspect that my friends and neighbours on the island will notice the failure and  elect a new set of more island focussed open minded individuals.

I stand by my previous support of anyone who seeks elected office but have a little sympathy for Councillors who refuse to understand how poorly the current approach treats, pupils, teachers and management in money, resources and rigid focus on academic exams. 

But as they fail to listen to professionals, parents and business is so many areas I have no sympathy when they repeatedly miss their own targets.