Ofsted have just sent the report of their findings of Portsmouth education to Portsmouth City Council. They don’t make good reading for a city council run by the same political party, the Lib Dems, for a generation of schoolchildren. A whole generation of young people who have been let down due to the lack of political vision of education by our local authority.
The report states ‘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, only I don’t blame the officers, it is the politicians who need to providing the vision and directing the officers to put it into place.
Only 52% of secondary schools in Portsmouth are good or better and 63% of primary schools. 2012 GCSE’s have gone up but are still 7% below national average (2011 was 14% below so there is good news that we are improving). This is not the fault of the children, other authorities with similar cohorts are doing much better.
The two schools who have been put into special measures are now going to become academies and, like the Charter Academy, they should see their standards improve as they get the support they need. It is sad that they have felt the need to move out of local authority control but if they are not getting the support, it is the only alternative if we don’t want another generation of children to be let down by the local education system.
Most teachers work extremely hard but if they are not getting the right support and professional development from the local authority, they will struggle. One of the comments from Ofsted is ‘The local authority does not have the capacity to provide significant support or training and there is no coherent strategy for brokering support from good or outstanding schools to help others improve. The more effective schools think they are not used well.’ It is all very well for the authority to issue warning notices to the schools that have declined but they need the right support to improve.
I have seen the response from the city council and they acknowledge that we need to improve and I look forward to seeing their plans but it should be the most single important issue considered by the city council at the moment. 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 city council 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.