YOU KNOW that the portfolio holder for education and council leader, cllr John Kent feels passionately about education and truly believes that it is at the cornerstone of Thurrock’s regeneration agenda. Infact, we were going to put a headline of “Hey media, leave those kids alone.” to his recent press release about the primary rankings.
Needless to say, the fact that, despite an improvement in the percentage of schools who have received an Ofsted ranking of Good or Outstanding, Thurrock still sits third from bottom in England.
However, Your Thurrock thought it would have a look across the county and compare and contrast.
Last week, our sister paper, YourHarlow published a story that showed that nine primary schools in Harlow had failed to reach the vital 60% mark for Level 4 in their tests.
YH delved into the Ofsted reports for Harlow primary schools and found that only 48% of all primary schools in Harlow obtained a Good or Outstanding report from Ofsted. Harlow had no Outstanding primary schools, they had fourteen that were graded as Good, ten Required Improvement and five in Special Measures.
We also looked at Basildon and found that their percentage was 52%. They had one Outstanding, eighteen Good, fifteen Requires Improvement and two in special measures.
Many would agree that judging Thurrock with Basildon and Harlow, two areas with similar socio-economic structures may put things in perspective.
“Stop knocking our kids”…’kids’ are baby goats and a phrase true educationalists do not use when describing children, pupils or students!
Anyway we are not “knocking our kids”…we are knocking clueless politicians and councillors like your good self Mr Kent!