MALCOLM MIME WRITES: When I was previously with you, four weeks ago, I reported on the current situation regarding the Ofsted ratings of the Island’s schools in relation to the pre-election promise made by local Tory leader Cllr Dave Stewart.

I reminded readers of Mr Stewart’s pre-election pledge to get 25 per cent of Island schools to an Ofsted rating of ‘outstanding’ by 2021 and reported that, at present, only one (two per cent) of the Island’s 51 schools has such a rating.

Following the publication of my article, it crossed my mind Mr Stewart might contact the CP to confess he had been naive to make such a pledge and he hoped any voters who may have voted for him or his party on the back of the promise would forgive him.

Such a confession would have gone a long way to laying to rest any thoughts people might currently be having that Mr Stewart’s pledge was made just to win votes — we all still vividly remember David Pugh’s very false pre-election vote-winning promise of 2009 to get the Island schools into the top ten per cent in the country.

It ended up costing him his job.

However, rather than Mr Stewart responding to my article with a confession and apology, what we got instead were letters to the CP from Cllr Paul Brading, who is the current cabinet member for children’s services, education and skills, and our Tory MP, Capt Bob Seely, attacking little old me.

Cllr Brading’s letter (which was published in the CP on 21.9.18) stated I should be ‘simply ignored’, with him adding I ‘know little of the substantial improvements this Conservative administration has made to education’.

He finished his letter by stating that I was ‘misinformed’.

With regard to Mr Brading’s comment I know little of the improvements, he obviously missed the part of my article where I specifically name-checked the likes of Sarah Hussey, Katherine Marshall, Caroline Sice and Rachel Kitley — all headteachers who have produced good results.

Granted, I didn’t put the success of these schools down to the Conservative administration. I put it down to good teaching, just as Ofsted has.

The second paragraph of Cllr Brading’s letter started with the words ‘the truth is’, which are words in my experience, when delivered by a politician at least, are usually anything but the truth.

In this instance, Cllr Brading’s ‘the truth is’ was followed by a claim the Tory council are ‘well on track to deliver our goal of all schools rated by Ofsted as good or outstanding by 2021’.

The grade given to Christ the King only last week of ‘inadequate’ (down from ‘good’) makes Cllr Brading’s ‘on track’ claim look a little hollow but, even putting that aside, Cllr Brading seems to have gotten himself a little confused as to what my article of last month was actually about.

It wasn’t about the Tories’ basic goal of getting all schools to a rating of ‘good’, it was about the much bigger goal we were promised by Mr Stewart, that 25 per cent of schools would reach an Ofsted level of ‘outstanding’ — or maybe this is what Cllr Brading means when he says I am, ‘misinformed’. Maybe all of the Island news outlets who reported Mr Stewart’s pledge of aiming to get 25 per cent of our schools to a rating of ‘outstanding’ were all lying — perhaps we have been fed the infamous ‘fake news’ we keep hearing about.

I guess the only way we can clear this up is by Cllr Brading or indeed Cllr Stewart, letting us know the answer to this simple question — is the 25 per cent goal I was reporting on last month still in place or is it not? Island voters need to know. I wonder why Cllr Brading wanted me to be ignored?