The Portsmouth News kindly printed this letter today responding to their article of 29th March about the Ofsted report on Portsmouth’s Education Authority.
Dear Sir,
Ofsted’s local education authority report does not make good reading for a city council run by the same political party for a generation of schoolchildren.
‘Schools, particularly those that are more vulnerable, and local authority officers, do not have a consistently clear understanding of the vision for school improvement across the local authority’. How damning is that?
I don’t blame the officers. It is the politicians who need to provide the vision and direction.
Only 52% of secondary schools and 63% of primary schools in Portsmouth are good or better.
2012 GCSE’s have gone up but are still 7% below national average. This is not the fault of the children, other authorities with similar cohorts are doing much better.
Our teachers work extremely hard but ‘the local authority does not have the capacity to provide significant support or training’. It is all very well for the authority to issue warning notices to the schools but they need the right support and professional development to improve.
Education is key to everything that goes on in the city. A good education system will improve the economy which will have a knock on effect to everything else. The Lib Dems are closing children’s centres, how short sighted is that when education starts at birth?
I look forward to hearing the response from our city councillors to see what political will there is to tackle this most important issue.
Yours faithfully,
Flick Drummond
Conservative