By Mal Butler
The IW Council has confirmed it spends an astonishing £119,000 in transport costs, taking students to the mainland for their education.
The response follows a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, after we recently revealed the IW Council was paying for a student to be taken by a Newport taxi firm to Birmingham on Sunday mornings, and collected the following Friday, costing £200 for each trip.
The IW Council has now agreed to ‘address this issue’ of transport services and ‘reduce the need for off-Island placements in the future’.
The figures reveal that primary school taxi payments cost £13,000, with more than £1,000 paid to parents in mileage, including ferry costs.
This rises to nearly £82,000, plus £500 in ferry costs, for secondary school pupils. While, another £17,000 and nearly £6,000 in parental mileage, ferry and train costs is spent on post-secondary students. The total comes to £119,665.64 each year.
This is despite our story on March 21 regarding former teacher, Jeff Welch, of Brighstone, who claimed his daughter, Jess, 19, who suffers from autism, high anxiety and type one diabetes, has been unable to attend mainstream education for seven years because of a lack of Council backing.
In a further blow, this week, the Council has had to apologise to a mother and pay nearly £4,000 over ‘failings’ in her son’s special educational needs care.
The Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman (LGO) upheld a complaint which said the council caused the mother, known only as Ms C, ‘frustration, time and anxiety’ and her son to miss education.
A council spokesman said: “The local authority has a statutory duty to support children, where applicable, with travel arrangements to school.
“We understand the concerns raised regarding the expenditure on sending children to the mainland for specialist education provision.
“The council has a small number of pupils that travel to the mainland for their educational needs. When this is the case, the decision is not taken lightly and is driven by the current lack of suitable provision on the Island.
“Our priority remains to meet the educational needs of all our children and young people, ensuring they receive the best possible support and opportunities.
“We are actively working to address this issue through the Island’s new education strategy, which includes an aim to enhance local educational facilities and services, reducing the need for off-Island placements in the future.
“Our commitment to improving the quality and accessibility of education on the Isle of Wight is unwavering, and we are dedicated to creating a sustainable and high-quality education system for all.’’
The new IW Council cabinet member for Education and Children’s Services is Cllr Claire Critchison. She was appointed to the vacancy after Cllr Jonathan Bacon resigned, when the cabinet supported closing only two of the five primary schools slated for closure at their meeting on March 20.
Cllr Bacon warned that the failure to confront the issue will exacerbate the financial crisis that faces the Island’s education system, and will do nothing to improve achievement outcomes, in the new educational strategy. He also predicted that under the new council structure, which comes into place in May, councillors would very quickly have to make the decision to consult on closing more primary schools, including those ‘saved’ only two weeks ago.
Isle of Wight Observer