The campaign group End Child Poverty has just compiled a new league table that reveals the best and worst places for the poorest students to go to school. It shows that Southwark is 21st best out of 148 education authorities in England, with 45.3% of children in receipt of free school meals obtaining 5 A*-C GCSE’s. The England average is 35.5% and London 44.6%. I was amazed to discover that London is outperforming the rest of England. The worst education authority is Nottinghamshire with only 22% on free school meals gained 5 A*-C GCSE’s compared to 59% of children who are not entitled to free school meals.The End Child Poverty group believe that London’s success is due to the London Challenge a £40m per annum program where authorities bid for money to give special extra help to poorer childrens education. I suspect its more complicated than this but either way such targetted extra spending to equalise life chances is exactly what we need more of.

Liberal Democrat policy is to dramatically increase this type of spending.

http://www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/news/press-releases/gcse-chances-of-poorest-are-a-post-code-lottery/24/113

I was shocked and deeply saddened to hear today that a Liberal Democrat colleague Councillor Anne Yates passed away this afternoon. She’d been in hospital for five week with a brief interlude at home for a few days.

What a very sad loss.

I know it’s only August but if you are super organised you might like to consider buying your Christmas cards from the charity Kids Kidney Research which is dear to me personally and my family. Have a look and hopefully you’ll feel inspired…. 

http://kidskidneyresearch.org

Today East Dulwich cllrs Jonathan Mitchell and I (cllr Richard Thomas is on holiday), along with Greater London Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon met with Southwarks Police Commander Malcom Tillyer along with other Police and MPA officers.

A very useful third meeting to discuss the future of East Dulwich Police Station.

We discussed the East Dulwich councillors proposals of how a Police station as we would see it could be kept on the current site, combined potentially with other council facilities, while meeting Police aspirations for new facilities commensurate with their requirements while obtaining capital receipts for the site.

Unfortuntely everything is on hold while the Metropolitan Police Authority reviews it property plans. Hopefully, in 4-8 weeks time we can continue these discussions.

Southwark Council and Southwark Police have been recognised for excellent partnership working. Hopefully we can deliver a role model in East Dulwich that takes such partnership working to an even higher level by sharing facilities and increasing how joined up services are for the general public. If successful this could be a model for other sites in Southwark and London as a whole.

The East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team have requested that the East Dulwich councillors via our Crime Reduction fund buy two trial pocketable metal detectors. The beauty of these is that they can be carried easilly in a pocket. If/when officers stop someone and search them they can use a metal detector and reduce the level of intimacy of a manual search, reduce the time it takes and increase the likelyhood of finding any hidden metal items.

Even detecting one extra knife and taking it out of circulation will have made this funding worthwhile.

We await the results of this initial trial.

Today Retail Price Index inflation is reported at 5%. Ouch!

National pay negotations for local government employees appear stuck around 2.45%. So a real term pay cut while they help councils deliver productivity gains ahead of national government ‘Gershon’ targets (while that same national government fails to meet its own productivity targets).

The same week it’s revealed that 26 London MPs voted themselves a 9.4% basic pay rise and Cabinet ministers a 4.3% pay increase. Which also means a mega pension increase when they stop being MPs.

Shouldn’t MP salaries be linked to average earning and pensions. They be very motivated to implement policies that boost wages and pensions.

The latest Key Stage 2 results for Southwark Primary Schools - key stage 2 - show fab results this year.

English +3%,   Maths +4%,    Science +2%.

Nationally, schools have improved on average by +1%, +1% and 0% respectively. So Southwark is catching up with the national averages. This years results build on several years of Southwark schools catching up.

WELL DONE - pupils, parents, teachers, assistants, governors and head teachers. What a great team effort must have been taking place

Still lots more to be done before every school in Southwark is better than the national average… 

After World War 2 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help countries in financial difficulties by lending money to tide them over. Laudable idea to give countries stability.

Unfortunately the conditions of such loans are often very painful. A recent study has shown 21 countries lent money by the IMF see an increase in deaths due to Tuberculosis. Kind of a measure of the health care systems in such countries.

The conditions are usually a drastic reudction in government spending on things like health care. This says to me that IMF conditions, programmes and ideology experiments on countries not taking into account the overal bigger impacts. Loosing large numbers of citizens in poor countries due to reduced health care provision is bad for economies. 

This could explain why the IMF is singulalry so unsuccesful helping poor countries succeed.

Last year for England crime dropped by 10% nationally but knife crime is still a problem. 22,151 reported knife crimes occurred with half of these in inner London, Manchester and Birmingham.

To help the East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team find knives before they are used to commit a crime the East Dulwich councillors are using Cleaner, Greener, Safer funds to purchase a metal detector wand so small it can fit in a shirt pocket. T

Hopefully this little device will work as hoped and help the local East Dulwich find any knives out their. Hopefully, they wont have any to find. Even finding one knife will be a huge success.

If this devices proves useful we’ll fund others.

August 1908, one hundred years ago, the Liberals’ landmark Old Age Pension Act received its Royal Assent and became law. A little bit of Liberal Democrat heritage to be particularly proud about.

I find it hard to imagine our country before the civilising affect of a state pension ensuring all older citizens are able to retire. The value of that pension over the last two decades has rapidly declined compared to average wages. That is sad.

The number of retired people has also shot up. But the principle is still present. A pension. I often wonder if I’ll make it to retirement age - burning the candle at one end with a busy job, the other end having a young fmaily and in the middle being a councillor trying to make things better.

Happy 100 years of pensions.