THE CASE FOR A SECONDARY IN SWANAGE

Speech by ROS KAYES delivered to COMMUNITY OVERVIEW AND SCRUTINY COMMITTEE, DORSET COUNTY COUNCIL on Thu 17th Dec 2009

Unlike my Conservative colleague I am not going to use this as a platform as an excuse to provide a political manifesto for change.

I will also say that Andy Kent's argument that the review should be shelved until the funding situation has been secured is a strong one.

Firstly, I want to say that I am supportive of the interpretation of the needs of first schools in this consultation - especially in Swanage where it has been fair & responsive to community needs. St George's Langton have fought a hard battle to have the option of continuing on their current site & I believe as a village school, with close links to community & church, that they deserve to. St Mark's also wants a new school on the middle school site. I would ask the committee therefore to drop option A and to leave option B as the option for consultation.

For those familiar with Shakespeare I want to present you with a pound of flesh conundrum which runs counter to the logic put by officers today but which is, I contend, equally valid.

This is a difficult committee to present to - because many of you are from wards in the Purbeck Pyramid but not from Swanage, and are seeking to defend your own school; others are from the other end of the county & have not been following this issue at all. You will be considering this issue from the perspective of the whole of Dorset & it is to this perspective that I wish to appeal.

I want to talk to you about choice, about democracy, about fairness & about consultation.

The arguments that have been out forward by Education Swanage , I believe should be heard with respect, This is a phenomenal level of research from a community group. But the recommendations before you today do not give their arguments a chance to be considered. Whether or not you disagree with their argument , I believe that it deserves to be heard & consulted upon by the community. It is there that it will stand or fall.

If Education Swanage can convince the public in the wider Purbeck Pyramid that their case is worthwhile the consultation will be favourable to them - there is always the risk it may not: they deserve the chance. Therefore I call on you to add a further option for consultation : Either a split site Purbeck School in Wareham and Swanage or a single school in Wareham.

Let me explain why I think this should be so. As county councillors you are required to take into account the interest of the whole of Dorset - you may define this in two ways:

1) the well being of the population in toto;

2) equitable provision across the population in respect of individual communities

I'm speaking to you today, not only as a Parliamentary Candidate, but as an elected District Councillor for Bridport, which is in West Dorset. Bridport has many similarities with Swanage: population; character; and a sense of not being fairly done by.

Bridport has a population of 13,340, Swanage, according to Dorset for You, 10,124. Wareham, incidentally has a population of 5,600.

There are three schools in the Bridport area - all secondaries: the school in Bridport has a population of 888 ; 6 miles away, Beaminster, with a population of 3,010, has a school population of 723; Lyme Regis, at a diatance of 12 miles, has a population of 3,640 & a school population of 1,006.

The Woodroffe schoole, in Lyme Regis with a 10,000 fewer head of population than Bridport (& 7,000 less than Swanage), has a larger cohort because it has received a score of outstanding in the last two Ofsted inspections. People will travel to go to a school serving a small population, if the school is good enough. All of these facts run counter to the logic presented by the officers in the report before you.

Oh - and there's another similarity between Swanage & Lyme Regis: two thirds of the catchment area is in the sea ! But no-one has threatened to close the Woodroffe school because of this.

I am using these analogies to illustrate the fact that context in this case, is everything. I do not believe that the context you have been given in this report is either entirely accurate or sufficiently full.

If most other towns in Dorset have a secondary school - and Bridport, Beaminster; Lyme; Wareham, Lytchett Minster, Dorchester, Sturminster Newton, Maiden Newton, Blandford, Shaftesbury, Gillingham & Sherborne do - why not Swanage ?

Swanage's secondaries were taken away in the 1970s reorganisation to the three tier system : other towns retained theirs. Inequitable provision therefore goes back a long way in Swanage - over 30 years - and you as councillors have to balance the well being of all of Dorset NOW against this historic inequity.

If you are looking at money being taken away from the capital grant for Dorset schools as a whole in order to provide for Swanage - why would that be a bad thing, when this town has had no secondary school for over 30 years and therefore by the officers' logic other schools in Dorset have presumably benefited from the larger capital budget at their expense. Would not the proposal to replace middle school provision in Swanage with secondary provision merely be redressing the balance.

Swanage has been the victim of depletion of resources: the depletion highlighted in the report by Education Swanage means that this lower resource for Swanage residents will continue: why should one community in Dorset be served worse than all of the others ?

In relation to the financial & organisational detail of the proposals for the split site Purbeck School, I do not believe that the figures based on funding from the Building Schools for the Future Programme in your report would be incapable of financing this school. I believe that the difficulty raised by the move towards a 3 year Key Stage 3 programme (which is being rolled out in every school in Dorset) to be a red herring.

Swanage is the largest town in the Purbecks. But the logic of Dorset County Council here is to develop the Purbeck school in Wareham, because that is the plan they were working to in the 1970s.

"A secondary school would bring all the benefits & facilities that will be offered to every other town in Dorset from 2010' says the education Swanage report.

That is the argument that I believe the people of Purbeck have a right to hear, so that they can make up their own minds about the validity of this proposal.

So let us turn the officers' argument on its head. If providing "better" education for the "whole of Dorset" means depriving one town of a resource available to all the others, then that is also an issue which must cause us concern.

It is your responsibility as members to make sure that every resident in Dorset gets an equitable and fair deal.

The deal that is on offer is NOT equitable for Swanage & that is why I urge you to include the possibility of a Swanage secondary in your recommendation.