Cabinet Member Colin Noble dabbles in education

Colin Noble is the Suffolk County Council cabinet member responsible for adult social care (or as a Twitter follower of mine put it “closing council-owned Old Folks homes”). Last week however he hit the local headlines for something rather outside his brief. Education.

As the Newmarket Journal report  this all comes from his comments at a parish council meeting:

At last month’s Mildenhall Parish Council meeting Suffolk county councillor Colin Noble made it clear he was less than impressed by results achieved by pupils sitting both GCSEs and A-levels at the college. At last month’s Mildenhall Parish Council meeting Suffolk county councillor Colin Noble made it clear he was less than impressed by results achieved by pupils sitting both GCSEs and A-levels at the [Mildenhall] college.

What is strange about this is that results at Midlenhall College of Technology actually went up this year - 7% for GCSEs and 5% for A Levels.

Understandably Susan Byles, Head of Mildenhall College is not impressed by Noble’s remarks saying:

If Cllr Noble makes these sort of statements at council meetings he needs to have all the facts in place as, if not, it can create an impression that is not accurate,”

 I don’t really think he is the best person to be making statements about the college.

Colin Noble is actually the only member of the cabinet to be actively involved on Twitter and he also has his own Blog where he has written a post defending his actions:

As an elected County Councillor representing the residents in my division who predominately send their children to Mildenhall College I think I am representing my community in speaking about the exam results and the performance of the school. It’s performance is a regular feature in my post bag and thus I watch their results with great interest, As a cabinet member of the County Council I also see every performance league table comparing our entire Suffolk school system and comparisons with similar County result from across the country, all of which I read with equal great interest. I am in regular contact with its Governors and its head teacher Susan Byles, even if she does not think I should comment saying in the Mildenhall Journal “I don’t really think he is the best person to be making statements about the college” – If I am not well placed to make comment then I do wonder who is?

I take a keen interest in all the schools in my division and the secondary schools they feed. Equally my views take account of the improving performance, which is to be commented and I have and do but in the context of Suffolk’s other secondary schools, there is much room for improvement, indeed all of our schools could make improvements and I equally think that the county must support that improvement that’s why we have changed from three to two tier, that’s why we support the free school movement, that why we have established ‘Raising the Bar’ with the Royal Society of Arts, all initiatives to see our schools make the improvement we all want to see.

Noble is certainly entitled to his opinion as a local councillor and indeed resident but what concerns me is that it appears unclear if this is his personal view as a local councillor or the administration’s collective view. If it is the latter I would expect that Graham Newman as Education portfolio holder would be better placed to comment.

It does seem strange to me that a councillor who rightly says we should up our performance in Suffolk appears to criticise a school doing just that and improving its results. It does not seem very encouraging to me that a school doing better is effectively told that it still isn’t good enough.

What Susan Byles takes issue with is that anyone hearing his comments would assume the school was doing worse not better.

In fairness to Colin Noble I do think he has a right to an opinion but I do think he should be more careful to be clear who is is speaking on behalf of.

I’m quite sure Colin Noble genuinely wants to see Suffolk Schools do better and I applaud initiatives like Raising the Bar. Creating success clearly does need challenge to do better but it also needs encouragement and praise when schools are moving in the right direction. Sadly we seem to do better with the challenge than the praise.

Perhaps Colin may chose his words a little more carefully in the future. If you’ve increased the results in your school it isn’t that relevant or encouraging to be told that the average results across the county went down or aren't good enough.