Copeland Lib/Dem candidate puts forward disastrous education plan for Whitehaven

A Lib/Dem election leaflet delivered to my home today by the Royal Mail has this to say about their candidate's education plans for the Whitehaven area

"SHE WILL FIGHT FOR A SINGLE SECONDARY SCHOOL IN WHITEHAVEN"

Good Lord!

In view of her experience as a teacher in West Cumbria, I find it difficult to believe that this is a badly described expression of support for the former proposal for a new education campus in Whitehaven which was originally planned to include Mayfield School, St Benedict's School, and what was then known as Whitehaven School onto one site, but still as three distinct schools.

There is still a "Campus Whitehaven" proposal which currently only includes Mayfield and St Benedicts but not Whitehaven Academy - see report here.

If this isn't about the campus proposal, then either

a) She wants the merger of St Benedict's and Whitehaven Academy, or

c) She wants to close one of those two schools.

The students and staff at both Whitehaven Academy and St Benedict's have had quite a lot to put up with already. Trying to merge these two schools - or closing either of them - would almost certainly cost some teachers their jobs and probably further disrupt the education of the students at one or both schools.

There is the additional complication that St Benedicts and Whitehaven Academy are different types of school.

St Benedict's Catholic High School, to give it the full title, is a catholic voluntary aided school.

Whitehaven Academy is a non-denominational school which started as a grammar school, went comprehensive, and is currently an academy. Putting two schools with a distinctly different ethos together would be a high-risk strategy and any merger or closure would also inevitably reduce the degree of choice in secondary education available in the area.

The Lib/Dems do not appear to have thought this one through.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more