Ofsted chairman David Hoare has come under fire for describing the Isle of Wight as a poor white “ghetto” that suffers from “inbreeding”.
Mr Hoare, a former City banker, made the comments as part of a discussion on the island’s underperforming schools, TES reported.
Speaking to educators at a Teach First conference in Leeds, he said the social implications were often a topic of interest with his dinner party guests.
“They think of it as holiday land. But it is shocking,” he said. “It’s a ghetto; there has been inbreeding.”
”Seven state schools were all less than good. There is a mass of crime, drug problems, huge unemployment.”
The Isle of Wight is one of England’s most underperforming areas for education, and was last year named as one of 16 local authorities where less than 60 per cent of children have below average attainment levels.
Mr Hoare, who has a holiday home near the island, was discussing the importance of improving education for the most disadvantaged pupils, adding that coastal towns were too often ignored.
“I have a house overlooking the Isle of Wight and often over a dinner party, someone will ask ‘How is education?’” he said.
“I say, ‘Fantastic, I love doing what I am doing. We’re really going to make a difference.’ But I say, ‘We’re living seven miles away from the second worst local authority when it comes to secondary education and the third worst when it comes to primary education’.
”And I say ‘Where is it? Portsmouth? No. Chichester? No. Bognor? No. We’re seven miles away and you don’t know we have a ghetto seven miles away’. British, white, poor, living on the Isle of Wight.“
To read the full story click here
Sourced from Independent, Featured image courtesy:
