After the all the protests about school reorganisation between 2004-2008, something far more dangerous in my view could be about to take place for our school system with little disturbance.
The Conservative leadership of the IW Council last year decided not to seek to run the newly-designated Secondary Schools at Carisbrooke, Cowes, Medina-Fairlee, Ryde and Sandown. Instead they decided to invite applications to run the schools as either arms-length Trusts or (far more worryingly) independent Academies using taxpayers money.
In June the Council received at least two applications from such organisations to run each of the planned Secondary Schools from September 2010. A decision will be made between the bidders for each school at a full meeting of the IW Council on 30 September; then to be confirmed at a Cabinet meeting the following evening. The Council could decide that none of the bids are what they want and to re-run the competition, but that is hardly likely given the now tight timetable for reorganisation.
We all had a chance to hear from the bidders at public meetings last July, with the closing date for comments now passed. These will hopefully inform the decison-making process, though most of the meetings were sparsely attended.
Having looked at the bids in detail myself and heard presentations from each of the bidders to councillors today, I have no doubt in my mind that I do not want our Secondary Schools run as unaccountable Academies using our taxes. Particularly (but not exclusively) when the bidder who wants to run all five Secondary Schools as academies (Academies Enterprise Trust) is partnered with a company who have shown in my opinion such contempt for the Isle of Wight community in recent months - Vestas Technology.
I also oppose in general the idea of Trust schools. Indeed I resigned as a governor of Medina High last year when it chose to create its Trust in readiness for this competition.
However, Trusts would be immensely more preferable to the academy bids because at least they are rooted in our Island community rather than in Essex, Guildford or London.
Between now and 30 September I want to
urge everyone who is concerned about the future of our Secondary Schools to contact their local IW councillor and urge them to
oppose the academy bids, and to support the trust bids. That way we can be sure that our secondary schools are in some degree locally managed and accountable.
If we don't do this it undermines all our arguments to keep other public services, such as the Fire Service, managed on the Island.
Finally the legislation that allows for this schools competition for our 'new' Secondary Schools was brought in by the current Government. It only secured a majority in Parliament thanks to the votes of Conservative MPs in the face of a rebellion by 52 Labour MPs. As you can guess I supported the rebels....
