News & Events

Template of a letter you can send to IW Council

Saturday 19th January 2008

(address)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(date)

Director of Education

Isle of Wight Council

County Hall

High Street

Newport

Isle of Wight

PO30 1UD

 

 

 

Dear Sir

 

I am writing in order to register my objections to the Council’s current plans to reorganise the school system on the Isle of Wight and in particular the plan to close St Helens Primary School. As such I wish to object to all the options that have been presented

 

The plans will have a massive detrimental impact on St Helens and the Isle of Wight as a whole. No thought has been given to the need to maintain and support village communities. Specifically no consideration seems to have been given to the economic and environmental effects of the proposals, in particular the necessity for parents to transport children, in particular younger children, to schools outside their village leading to severe and unnecessary pollution and congestion.

 

In addition no thought has apparently been given to how children are to be placed in other schools if the proposed closures take place. While the overall results of the plans will inevitably involve many parents having to take their children to schools many miles away, exacerbating the effects of any closure indicated above, children may also have to move schools when their school remains open but they cannot remain there when places are re-allocated and there can be no guarantee that siblings will not end up having to attend different schools (which will more than likely be many miles apart.)   

 

I also wish to object to the format of the questionnaire that has been circulated by the Council to parents. The questionnaire has been constructed in a devisive manner, attempting to force agreement with at least one of the options. The questionnaire does not allow those filling it in to indicate an objection to the plans overall and all the options presented. As a result I am unable to fill it in.

 

The plan and the presented options are based on cost cutting. The development and improvement of educational standards in the schools and the effects on the communities which the schools support have not been addressed adequately or at all.

 

I trust my strong objections to this ill conceived and poorly thought through plan will be noted.

 

Yours sincerely

 

(name)