VECTIS VIEW: Vix Lowthian – National spokeswoman on Education for the Green Party

By Press Release Nov 26, 2022

Once a year, some of the smartest and most ambitious Isle of Wight students – those aiming to be vets or doctors or study at Oxford or Cambridge – meet for an evening of mock interviews to prepare them for the real thing.

This week, as a class teacher myself, I was privileged, to gather with other Island teachers, medics, engineers and professionals, to quiz, interrogate and push this group of A-Level students to be fully prepared to achieve at the highest academic level. “It has been such a privilege to meet these amazing young people!” said one interviewer to me over coffee afterwards. And truly, we have some fantastic students studying in our Island schools. Every day I feel like I have the best job in the world.

But this group of ambitious and accomplished young people are not reflective of the current state of education on the Isle of Wight as a whole. Statistically, our schools are at or close to, the bottom of the league tables when it comes to exam results for 11, 16 and 18-year-olds. We can make excuses and explanations – we have high levels of poverty, Westminster politicians are failing us, our teachers need to be better supported – but the reality is that most other towns, cities and counties across England face similar issues.

We need to have a plan.

Twenty years ago (yes, I’m pretty old now as my teenage sons keep reminding me), I taught in Leeds in a lively but academically weak school in a deprived area of the city. It was not dissimilar to many schools on the Island. But it was just a long walk or a short bus trip from a busy city centre and visible job opportunities with financial and legal corporations, music and arts, sports and industry. We took part in a government programme to ‘widen opportunities for participation’ for students from less privileged families or with little parental experience of university. We took students on visits and trips and had enthusiastic adults coming into school to talk about their jobs and opportunities for the students to get involved.
The aim was to have motivated students who were ambitious for their futures and aware of the broad range of opportunities and options available to them in terms of study and work.

Yes, our Island schools have careers days and mainland organisations who set up stalls to tell our teenagers about their future choices. But is this enough? It is clear in the statistics that other areas – with schools that teach children with a diversity of backgrounds, range of languages and who may only have moved to the UK in recent years – are outperforming the Island in terms of exam results. What can we learn from their achievements?

Learning is not limited to the confines of the classroom, or even the school building. Arguably the culture and values of the family, the community and their friends have as great an impact on achievement as teachers and schools.

The Isle of Wight is full of talented and successful businesses, organisations and leaders in the arts, science, and industry. We should organise and gather this wealth of talent and experience into a co-ordinated Isle of Wight programme which can go into our schools and our wider communities to inspire and motivate our young people to have higher aspirations for their futures.
After the challenges of the last couple of years and the claims that Isle of Wight education is failing, we need to do better than more of the same. We need to give our young people direction, ambition and widen their horizons. We need to give them hope!