The Island Challenge: Tackling poor outcomes on the Isle of Wight

When former multi-academy trust boss Toby Salt was asked where he would like education on the Isle of Wight to be in ten years’ time, he gave a somewhat surprising answer: “To be the Finland of England.”

“You could never get a minister to speak about school improvements and standards without saying how wonderful Finland was… I’d like other people to be trotting here to see how you can make a difference.”

Finland has long topped international education tables, making it a source of inspiration for UK ministers. Former schools minister Nick Gibb previously coined it as the “doyenne of the international education circuit”.

Salt wants to reach a point where ministers say: “If you want to get it right, go look at the Isle of Wight.”

The former chief executive of the Ormiston Academies Trust is now the independent chair of the island’s new education forum, which will bring together leaders to discuss challenges and potential solutions for the holiday destination’s schools.

An hour’s ferry journey from Portsmouth, the island, like many English coastal towns, suffers from high levels of deprivation, stubborn educational outcomes and workforce recruitment shortages.

We spent three days meeting headteachers, council leaders and parents to find out more about the realities on the island.

The challenges

The list of challenges is long.

Just over half (51 per cent) of pupils achieved the expected level in reading, writing and maths at the end of key stage 2 last academic year, compared with 62 per cent nationally. Only 59 per cent achieved a level 4 or above in GCSE maths and English.

It has one of the highest rates of children and young people with an education, health and care plan (EHCP), and the highest percentage of home-educated children in England.

Three areas are among the 10 per cent most deprived in England, according to the indices of deprivation.

At the same time, there were hundreds of unfilled reception places this year, with councillors agreeing that reducing the number of school places was a “critical and urgent priority”.

But proposals to close six primary schools last year made headlines when officials were found not to set out the criteria for selection, which “misled” consultees.

A 2024 report by the Local Government Association on the proposals, commissioned by the council, said many islanders might identify “their own villain” to blame for the problems.

But “the reality is that what the Isle of Wight is facing, was not and is not something where blame can be approportionate to any one group, person or organisation”, said the report. 

The council was also stripped of its children’s services in 2013 after Ofsted rated it as ‘inadequate’. In February 2024, it was brought back in-house, with Ashley Whittaker as its head.  

The island has one of the highest rates of children in social care, and alongside Hampshire, the longest waiting list for child mental health services.

“You’d probably struggle to find another local area that’s had that much change going on,” Whittaker says.

Whittaker, who moved from London, says: “Many people’s perception of what the island is about is inaccurate… people who live here, for many of them – and they’re very often the people that we serve – life is very different.”

The solutions?

With Salt, also the former chief executive of the exam board AQA, the council is launching the “Island Challenge” through its new education forum.

Local education chiefs and schools will work with the Department for Education, RISE advisers and health officials, meeting once a month to discuss priorities and share best practice.

While still in its early stages, the forum will spread successful strategies across schools and use data analysis to track pupil progress.

Salt, who has led similar “challenge” projects across London, the Midlands and Manchester, has family and professional connections to the island.

“I think it’s an absolutely beautiful place, it’s got some fantastic schools and families and really good services,” he says.

“I know it from the government level, the headteacher level, from a local level and the personal level. If I died tomorrow, I’d want to know that the island was better from our intervention.”

Salt hopes that bringing leaders together will build a strong case for it to become an “associate” to the government’s Mission Coastal, which aims to tackle entrenched disadvantage in coastal areas.

But ministers have only selected Scarborough and Hastings to be part of the scheme, which was announced in the schools white paper.  

In Hastings, disadvantaged pupils averaged 26 for attainment 8. In Scarborough, that stood at 27. It is slightly higher in the Isle of Wight at 30.3, but still below the national average of 34.9.

“We want and expect the island to be part of that, because ultimately we’re 100 per cent coastal, not just a little bit coastal,” Salt says. “I think it’s right to focus on those more isolated, challenged communities.”

‘Radical action required’

According to the Local Government Association (LGA), reducing the number of schools “is the only available solution to the current challenges” on the island, and that “radical action is clearly, urgently required”.

The Isle of Wight has 286 unfilled reception places this year across its 37 primary schools. Sixteen of the 31 maintained primary schools have an unsustainable in-year deficit.

Last year, the council proposed to close six schools, but only two were voted through in March. In June the government’s admissions watchdog overturned the decision on Arreton St George’s Primary in Newport.

The Office of the Schools Adjudicator found the council’s school selection process was “flawed as there was no clear and transparent method for identifying and selecting the relevant schools for closure”.

It also found “that due to misleading and incorrect information being set out in the statutory notice and other documentation published at the representations stage, consultees were misled to an extend that their responses may have been different had the correct information been presented.”

Councillor Michael Lilley, a critic of the process, claimed the schools up for closure were often those serving the poorer, less mobile families, and therefore “very important to the community”.

Lilley, a Liberal Democrat member for Ryde, Appley and Emfield told Schools Week: “The principle is accepted that you cannot avoid closing some of the schools, but it needs to be open and transparent and fair, which it wasn’t.

“In a way that report was good, because it gave a foundation to the education department to get it right this time.”

Whittaker says things have been done differently this year, with “a lot of learning from what happened in the previous process”. However, councillors will ultimately make any decision.

Council shake-up

Following local elections in May, Reform has one less than a majority on the council.

There are four Liberal Democrats, two Greens, two Conservatives and 12 independents.

Reform agreed to elect independent councillor Jonathan Bacon, a former Conservative, as the council leader.

But the council runs by a committee system, with decisions delegated to cross-party groups of councillors, rather than a one-party cabinet.

Whittaker recently told a council committee hearing: “If you ask school leaders what the relationship is between… the financial situation in my school and my ability to invest in improved outcomes, they will say there’s a very big link between the two things.”

Committee members agreed that reducing the number of school places on the island was a “critical and urgent priority”, noting that school closures was one of the “several different ways” outcomes could be improved.

SEND reforms

The Isle of Wight faces further challenges when it comes to the government’s sweeping SEND reforms.

Until the scheme was scrapped earlier this year, the council was part of government’s controversial safety valve programme, which gave extra funding to deficit-ridden town halls in exchange for measures to reduce costs.

But as of April it was still facing a dedicated schools grant deficit of £17 million.

About 9 per cent of pupils have an EHCP, with a further 15 per cent receiving SEND support outside a statutory plan.

In the 2025-26 autumn term, more than 5 per cent of the island’s pupils (690) were recorded as electively home educated.

DfE data suggests 150 of these were due to philosophical reasons, 180 for mental health reasons, 100 for dissatisfaction with SEND, bullying or general reasons, 20 because of permanent exclusion, and 180 unknown.

Councils have submitted local SEND reform plans, which the government will approve in exchange for writing off 90 per cent of historic SEND deficits.

In the island’s draft plan, it said “the very high level of elective home education on the island is, in part, indicative of parental dissatisfaction with SEND support within mainstream schools”.

Lilley suggested if home–educated pupils were returned to school, it would ease the financial pressure that heads faced.

But Whittaker said it was more complicated than that.

“That would bring a lot of money back into the school system, and it would, to a certain extent, address some of the financial challenges that we have.

“But that will only happen if we take the fundamental steps we need to take to improve the quality of mainstream inclusion.”

Growing trends

Two of Tanya Robinson’s children are receiving education other than at school –a growing trend in recent years. 

Her youngsters are receiving therapeutic interventions after struggling with their mental health, and she has been involved in eight SEND tribunals since moving to the island seven years ago. 

“I found my way because I was just fortunate I was able to do that, but I can totally see why it just breaks your soul,” she says.  

The challenges facing schools on the island make things worse for SEND pupils, she said. 

“That brings its own challenges for children that are trying to function in a school that isn’t up to standard anyway… what you really need is a big culture shift.”

The island’s plans for a free school supporting children with social, emotional and mental health needs were canned after no academy sponsor was identified.

Instead, the council plans to expand its specialist units in mainstream schools, in line with the aspirations of the white paper.

But Whittaker has found some schools questioning how they will manage extra demands as they’ve told him, “we’re already really busy, have you seen my balance sheet?”

The island’s draft SEND plan argued that the island’s “unique challenges” meant “additional central government support would be appreciated in a number of areas”.

Whittaker says ministers “need to consider the distance of the journey that local authorities have got to travel… our starting point is a reasonable distance away.”

Unique challenges, unique solutions

Schools are using incentives for teachers to live and work on the island.  

At Lift Academy, in Ryde, an in-house initial teacher training programme has trained 30 new teachers in five years.

Its current staff body includes 20 former pupils “who have returned to the island to make a different in their home community”, according to Lift regional education director, Karl Sampson.

The school offers flexible working, but also sells the “lifestyle” of the Isle of Wight, such as cheaper high-quality housing and access to beaches.

Natalie Sheppard, the head of Carisbrooke College, also offers flexible working.

It took four recruitment rounds to find an exams officer – who will work hybrid – and three to find a special educational needs coordinator.

“They’re difficult to find everywhere, but they’re doubly difficult here,” she says.

Sheppard is also considering partnering with agencies that bring home UK teachers who have moved abroad for work.

“It’s just trying to be really creative … around how we reach people and put ourselves on the map.”

The school has focused on core subject development, with GCSE maths level 4 grades rising from 60  to 70 per cent between 2023-24 and 2024-25.

But pupils flourish in other subjects. The most popular is history – where pupils learn about Carisbrooke castle, close to the school.

Food technology, travel and tourism, Mandarin, art and music are also popular at GCSE.

There are plans to implement a pathway for pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs that will remove one GCSE and instead do the King’s Achieve Award, an educational and personal development initiative ran by the King’s Trust.

This will involve financial knowledge, CV writing and how to interview for jobs.

Sheppard wants her school to offer different subjects to widen the horizons of her pupils.

“You’ve got to just look at situations and innovate, and that’s more important for those children, that’s going to give them a better chance of success than sticking with the fully traditional.”

Eliminating ‘excuse culture’

A short distance away at Nine Acres Primary School, former head Beth Dyer transformed the school from a ‘requires improvement’’ to ‘outstanding’ Ofsted rating in nine years.

She is now working in the education services at the council. But Rosie McDonald, the school’s new head, says leaders transformed the school by eliminating “excuse culture”.

A recent inquiry into the educational outcomes of white working–class pupils found a “misalignment” between schools and communities in how they defined success and the purpose of education.

The report said parents and pupils placed a greater emphasis on wider life outcomes, such as getting a good job, which could strain relationships with teachers.

Tackling this is central for McDonald.

“We’ve challenged the idea of what success is … it’s not about devaluing anything, it’s about getting them into a successful choice of life that they will be happy with.”

The school teaches career lessons once a half term from year 1 giving children the “opportunities to build those points of reference to all the possibilities” wider than their community.

This has had real impacts, McDonald says, as she recalls seeing her former pupils, often from non-working families, working in Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury’s.

But academic outcomes are strong too, with 86 per cent of pupils passing phonics in key stage 1, and 65 per cent passing their reading, writing and maths in key stage 2 – well above the island’s averages.

The school also has a three-week transition period for pupils in the summer term, including those going to secondary school, while many schools stick to a few days.

‘Whole island community’

For McDonald, the fear of closure is clearly there. “I’m not going to sit here and say I’d be disappointed if our school was closed,” she says, “but if we’re part of that wider island focus and that vision to go, ‘this is what all children need,’ that’s where we have to go.”

Lilley suggests the council hasn’t been “allowed by national policy to have an island solution”, and that they would learn better from other islands across the world, rather than England.

Whittaker says: “I believe that we will be able to be in a place where organisations will take decisions based on the best interests of the island education system, not necessarily of their own organisation. That’s about moral purpose.”

For Salt, the biggest difference will be made if everyone works together.

“I suppose the cliché is, no man’s an island, and no school’s an island on an island.”