Tuition Fees – FACTS

Lots has been said about the changes to Tuition Fees over the last 6 months. What a raw issue. 

I thought it might be useful to remind everyone of the actual facts: 

– No student pays anything upfront.

– Increasing the repayment threshold from £15,000 to £21,000.
– Ending upfront fees for part-time students.
– Part-time students become eligible for student loans.
– More generous grants for lowest income students.
– Ensuring all students will repay less per month than they currently pay.
– Under the scheme, any student eligible for free school meals who is accepted for a place at university would have one year’s fees paid by the state.

These concessions are solely due to Lib Dems in government – if we weren’t there, the Tories would have designed a system that was far worse! In 1997 Labour’s manifesto they had “no plans to introduce tuition fees”, but then did so, and promised in 2001 manifesto that they would not introduce, and had outlawed top-up fees, but then introduced them. Their system was incredibly unfair and didn’t work well.

Pupil Premium

The Pupil Premium is extra money for every school for each poor pupil they take next year under the government’s pupil premium scheme – one of the key four Liberal Democrat manifesto pledges

Schools will receive the money for every pupil in receipt of free school meals whose parents have an annual income of less than £16,000. The premium schools will receive is £430 for each child.

Head teachers will be encouraged to spend their premium on reducing class sizes or more one-to-one tuition. This should Read the rest of this entry.

East Dulwich Key Stage 2 results

Well done to Goose Green School for such great results after a difficult few years. Talking to parents, teachers, officers I think they’re now on a roll.

The latest set of Key Stage 2 test results for Primary schools in our area and nearby and in order of higher results are:

School name,              % English, % Maths, % English & Maths, Value Added from age 7 to these tests.

Dulwich Hamlet Junior    93            91              89                 100.6

St.Anthony’s RC               90            90              86                 100.9

Goose Green                     82            85              79                  100.7

Heber                                 92            76              76                  100.5

Bessemer Grange            74             91              74                  102.3

St.Johns & St.Clements  85             73              73                  101.4

Goodrich                           82             76              71                  100.8

Southwark AVERAGE English & Maths 73%

National AVERAGE  English & Maths 73%

For a view of the all Southwark results.

Student tuition fees

I was disappointed to read about the student tuition fees proposals – I understand the necessity if we’re to maintain 45% of kids going to university. If we’re going to have 45% going to uni when only 20% of jobs actually need graduates then the system proposed makes sense with: 

  1. All students repaying less per month under this Government’s policy than they currently pay.
  2. Lowest earning 25% of graduates will repay less under this Government’s policy than they do now.
  3. The top earning 30% of graduates will pay back more than they borrow and are likely to pay more than double the bottom 20% of earners.
  4. Over half a million students will be eligible for more non-repayable grants for living costs than they get now.
  5. Almost one million students will be eligible for more overall maintenance support than they get now.
  6. Part time students will no longer have to pay up front fees benefiting up to 200,000 students per year.
  7. There will be an extra £150m for a new National Scholarship Programme for students from poorer backgrounds and we will introduce tough new sanctions of universities who fail to improve their access to students from backgrounds.

 I wish we could have been braver and had zero tuition fees, as we promised, for the brightest 20% and whatever universities wanted to charge for others. Where is the sense in subsidising people the country doesn’t need to be at university?

Pupil Premium

It was great news last week that the Lib Dem pupil premium amount was confirmed at £2.5bn a year.

The basis for how much pupil premium is how many children are entitled and presumably claiming free school meals. A nice simple measure. For Southwark this could be incredibly good news. Southwark has the third highest success rate of 66% for kids entitled to free school meals claiming them. With so many kids in Southwark entitled and claiming free school meals a lot of money from the Pupil Premium should be coming to Southwark state schools.

This proportion would be easy to increase to 90% as Durham have via cashless card systems where no one knows publicy who is in receipt of free school meals. 90% is probably the maximum actually possible as the remaining 10% will be for kids who bring packed lunches or go home for lunch having some kind of family duty.

Labour led Southwark Council is planning to provide free school meals. Its not clear whether providing universal free school meals in primary schools will result in no one claiming for free school meals as what would the point be? This could see Southwark receiving no Pupil Premium resulting in the lose of many many millions of pounds.

The sad thing is that none of the actual research shows the aims of southwark labour will be met with universal free school meals and it now seem likely the cost to schools will be huge. Schools may be better to refuse free school meals and boycott them.

Provisional Primary School results

The provisional Primary School results for Key Stage 2 & 3 are now available:

 http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000949/sfr23-2010.xls

It shows that for inner london 511/700 schools took part. I’m told by officers that the 6 Southwark schools you’d expect better results from didn’t take part. So its really hard to compare this year with previous years.

Despite this broadly Southwark appears around the inner london average.

I’m looking forward the final version coming out in January.

Lordship Lane gas works – part 2

Council officers confirmed yesterday that the contractor will employ someone to assist with people crossing at this junction while Southern Gas Networks works continue. These works are confirmed as finishing on Tuesday 7 September and then the remainder of the week will be reinstating the road.

The Police Safer Neighbourhood Team have said they’ll be vigilant against poor driving through these works. The contractor will next week, starting on Monday, employ a lolly pop person to assist with the school runs and keeping our kids safer.

I feel relieved that this junction will now be safer during school term. I was frantic to avoid a trafic repeat of the young school girl who died during similar works at the junction of East Dulwich Road with Peckham Rye.

Separately I’m arranging a council officer briefing about the whole process that can lead to this situation. Something has to change.

Lordship Lane Gas works

The gas works and the ‘temporary’ removal of the pedestrian phase at the junction of Lordship Lane with Barry Road junction (where Dulwich Library is) and vehicles, due to temporary lights, driving on the opposite side of the road causes me very real fear.

This is exactly the scenario we had over at Peckham Rye/East Dulwich Road junction where a young school girl tragically died crushed by a lorry while trying to navigate the temporary situation on her way to school.

Is everything being done to speed these works through?
Can a temporary lolly pop person be assigned to help kids cross as this is a route to school for many when local schools return tomorrow?

I’ve asked these questions of the lead council manager. Southwark schools go back today and these works are near a school.

I’m really fearful that we are going to have a tragic repeat.

Pupil Premium

Some more details of the Lib Dem Pupil Premium are coming out.

It means from September 2011 that schools that take disadvantages kids will get additional money they need to provide extra support that such kids need. It also means with this extra support such kids wont be holding back other kids from progressing. Win win all round. The headteachers will decide how to us this money – potentially 121 tuition, catch-up classes, whatever the head things best.

What I hadn’ realised was that this was one of the key sticking points when the Lib Dems were negotiating with Labour whether a joint coalition Lib Dem/Labour Government could be formed. Staggering. Of all the things to reject!

The Pupil Premium should go some way to addressing the unfairness of our education system. If you’re poor our education system is half as likely to help you gain 5 good GCSE’s as kids with non poor backgrounds. Breaking this glass ceiling will make Britain fairer and a more liberal society. Imagine all that talent held back for past decades.

I remember the infant, junior and comprehensive schools I went to. You didn’t mention the first two as it was socially embarrassing due to the poor results and resulting stigma – they’re still doing badly 35 years later. The comprehensive did an ok job by many but let down so many more challenging kids.

To break this cycle – that really would be transformational for our countries fortunes.

The quid pro quo from the Tories was the Academies Bill. This appears relatively low impacting on the national scale.

Norwood School

I was chuffed to hear that the Norwood School rebuild is now planned to go ahead. It had been cancelled by Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove but after being told it was so far advanced it made more sense to proceed he announced last Friday this one will. Well done Norwood School.

This is great news for this school. The last Ofsted report said it was a Good school that is rapidly improving. Not so long ago Kingsdale School was in this position and its rebuild really seems to have helped it become outstanding. Fingers crossed this helps Norwood School replicate this success.