Bob Seely MP says he feels there has been a lack of interest in raising literacy standards in Island primary schools from the Alliance-led Council. He has now written to local councillors to highlight the importance of raising standards. Speaking about the situation, Mr Seely has said:
“The Alliance group running the Council need to grip education standards. At the time of my correspondence with the Department for Education in October 2023, Councillor Bacon was the third Alliance councillor to head up education in as many months. “I accept now that the matter is being given a focus which has been lacking. But it has taken too long. We need to focus on delivering the best education chances for Island children.”
He adds:
“The reading system that has been introduced in the past decade by the Conservatives, known as the phonics system, has been a massive national success story. Thanks to this system the reading abilities of England’s children have gone up from 11th in the world in 2011 to 4th in 2021. “We need to make sure that Island kids and their teachers share in this national success.”
Following a series of meetings, discussions and correspondence with ministers and officials at the Department for Education (DfE), Mr Seely secured a commitment from the DfE to host a reading conference in Carisbrooke in June last year with the Island’s centre of excellence, Springhill School. After the conference, more schools came forward to engage. In the past 2 weeks, Mr Seely has written to the remaining primary schools to urge them to make contact with the centre of excellence. Bob has thanked teachers for their efforts:
“The work they do is vital for the future of the Island. Teachers carrying out the phonics reading method are helping Island children not just to read, but to be able to engage with knowledge. I am so grateful for the life-changing work they do.”
Streaky will head up anything just so long as he can play the drums and be on Vectis Radio.
“The Alliance group running the Council need to grip education standards.
I guess Bob is validating his argument with his mistake above.
Perhaps he is accustomed to his government being thought of as headless chickens, and therefore plural, rather than a single, cohesive body. Nah.
Bob acting like the Tories invented phonics, which has been around for years. Get your pre-school kids some Letterland books and they will be reading in no time.
Too many iPad babies for such a small island.
I wonder if Bob is familiar with the expression “pot calling the kettle black”? If not he ought to and perhaps ask himself what he of any great substance has actually achieved for his constituency?
pop-up-bob strikes again, for another photo / publicity opertunity LOL
Nothing about the shambles on the ferries at the weekend then bob?
oh hold on,are you a shareholder?
dick.
He’s going more for a misdirection trick it looks like. It’s downright cowardly for him to fail to address that.
Oh no, he’s decided suddenly to pontificate on that one too. Late to the party again, Seely. Election looming is there? #anyonebutseely
You stupid, stupid man. How dare you! Every bloody school teaches phonics; the problems lie with the ridiculous amount of unnecessary tick-box admin overstretched teachers have to endure from the threat of Ofsted, which really IS not fit for purpose. This creates a time deficit which is compounded by budget reductions across schools, low staff, low morale, sicknesses due to stress and teachers leaving but not being replaced. NQT’s are leaving within months once they are on the ground, eyes wide open to the impossible tasks of trying to educate kids with their hands tied behind their backs. Just this week a school in Cowes has had to take the difficult decision of amalgamating classes in order to save staff costs. Go Seely, just go.
We know that the council has been told to close down schools and reorganise others but they won’t do anything until after the election for obvious political reasons. Instead, the council are content to waste money on schools with empty spaces when that money could be spent on other schools that need funding. Blame the council. Ofsted exists to enforce standards because there were none before it existed and children throughout the country were being let down by terrible schools. Standards were woeful in many schools and Ofsted has to exist to protect standards. It seems that many teachers think that their work should not be assessed. Sadly, in the real world, our work has to reach a certain standard to do a job properly.
Absolute hogwash. Student attainment prior to Ofsted was roughly similar, yet their wellbeing index since Ofsted has diminished, as has that of teachers (University of York, 2020). This is in spite of the weighting of socio-economic factors of students, also diminished in recent years. The empty school spaces are largely BECAUSE of Ofsted’s arbitrary grading system; indeed a recent report highlighted that during an inspection should the online reporting system crash, which is often, the reports are done manually from memory, data plucked from the air. This is from the inspectors themselves under the threat of adverse whistleblowing. Standardisation IS the problem. As is constant testing.
All research (and there is very little) into the effects of Ofsted on achievement and well-being is piss poor. Positive and negative effects have been reported but the designs of these studies are weak, mainly due to selective disregard of confounding factors biasing results.
There’s plenty. Biggest indicator is the standards across 32 countries where we come 25th. Most other countries 16-24 age group are the best educated, for us the best basic education is in the 55+ group. Way before Ofsed. I don’t blame Ofsted per se, they are only acting on orders from the administration after all. Confounding factors? Did you mean compounding??
Your latter sentence demonstrates that you know nothing about statistical analysis, which is common in the education sector.
Bob back again blaming everyone else for our crumbling country. Maybe if Liz Trusts 30 day government had not blown a 30 billion pound hole in the countries finances we could have some money to spend on the schools.
Get this moron off my screen and out of his job, what a waste of space.
Can’t they just send him to Rwanda with 199 other Tory ****s, then everyone’s happy, Sunak still gets to say the flight with a full complement of new Rwandan residents took place. The UK is suddenly a better place.
Someone is trying to appear useful before the election aren’t they? Putting the blame on others to detract personal failings is such a standard Conservative policy.
The irony. Time after time he’s voted to cut funding to just about everything, now when he thinks he might be getting sacked he keeps popping up with these ridiculous sound bites. Seeley only truly cares about one thing and that’s himself. Get lost you creepy tosser.
It’s a typical response from a middle class private school politician who expects children to excel in education. He obviously doesn’t understand society on the Island, plus the heavy concentration of special needs here.
there isn’t a heavy concentration of special needs – just a heavy concentration of kids, let down by their dumb parents who then claim they are special needs.
I take it you’re an expert in this field
Reading interventions in schools are mainly undertaken by teaching assistants. These vital cogs in schools’ machinery are vastly underpaid for the skills they use. In many schools on the island, these TAs are not being replaced when they get better paid jobs.
And why is that Mr Seeley? It’s fourteen years of chronic underfunding by central government. Being an island, it’s worse here.
Your ‘Island Deal’ has never really happened, has it Mr Seeley?
It’s hard for kids to learn when their parents are struggling to find a decent meal to provide and weren’t living in poverty Bob.
I would say, “Let’s see how well you can do your job on an empty stomach”, but given how dire you are at doing it with all your needs seen to anyway, I’m not going to further risk this islands health and wellbeing to test that theory out.
Raise your own standards, and be a better MP before criticising others
utter crap – demon, utter crap
I see he didn’t blast his own party for underfunding education though.
After three Prime Ministers in as many months Slimy Seely’s assessment of Alliance Education heads is a bit rich
Wait until he finds out about the housing crisis!
Bit “like seldom seen’s” own lack of any sort of literary skills in replying to any of his constituents emails… An automated reply from your office “seldom seen” does not count as any sort of literacy!.
I think you will find seeley,that there is a lack of interest,in YOU!