Latest on primary school admissions.

Overall in Southwark 82.9% of this years admissions have been given their 1st choice. Last year it was 74%. In total 94.4% have been given one of their four choices. Last year it was 81.2%. Last year 474 applications were fulfilled by a non chosen school. This year 175. This is stunningly better than last year.
Please see attached.

For East Dulwich ward we have 5 of those 175 not allocated a preference:
• Rye Oak School (1)
• Gloucester Primary School (1)
• Goose Green Primary School (1)
• Grange Primary School (1)
• Peckham Park Primary School (1)
Of course, many of these parents will get a preference as things shake down as people decide not to accept an offer as they’ve made alternate arrangements.
In the mean time I’ve asked where in East Dulwich ward these applicants live.
If you’re one of these five please get in touch so I can try helping you.
Read the rest of this entry.

Primary School Admissions

This years primary school admissions announced today.

This year 83% offered 1st preference, comapred to last years 72%. This year 94% offered one of their four preferences whereas last year 81%.

It was a brave decision showing great leadership by Cllr Nick Stanton to delay this announcement allowing officers to work out the impact of many scenarios of where to place bulge classes. This time will see over 300 more hundreds of kids compared to last year in the schools of their parents choice. Instead of 474 kids being steered through the system during the summer we’ll see 174.

This compares exceptionally well to Lambeth where 75% obtianed their first preference and Lewisham where 92% obtained choices 1-5.

East Dulwich Cleaner, Green, Safer 10_11

The East Dulwich councillors have selected the following schemes for Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding:

– Traffic calming in East Dulwich bounded and including Lordship Lane, East Dulwich Grove and Melbourne Grove specifically including Matham Grove. £25,000.

– East Dulwich Carbon Fund funding measures to reduce CO2 and fuel proverty in East Dulwich. £30,000. First £25,000 allocated to addressing the 647 homes without loft insulation in East Dulwich which is the most cost effective way of reducing CO2. Last £5,000 to try other ideas.

– Goose Green school greenwall planting along Grove Vale. £5,000. Reducce the visual impact of Goose Green school on Grove Vale and as important create a much better play environment for school kids both visually, but also green wals absorb pollution and noise.

– East Dulwich Crime Prevention Fund. £10,000. Further projects to build on the huge success of preventing crime in East Dulwich.

– Gating alleyways. Installing more alley gates in East Dulwich specifically on Northcross Road and Shawbury Road. Eliminating more anti social hotspots.

– Street trees. £12,400. Planting more street tress in East Dulwich. So far around 220 tress planted in last four years. Plan to experiment with planting them in new build outs further from peoples homes and calming traffic.

– East Dulwich station extra covered waiting area. £6,000. Matched funding with Southern Railways. Make using East Dulwich station into central London more comfortable and pleasant to use.

– Bicycles for Schools. £8,000. Offer every East Dulwich school access to bicycle pools.

– Eco dry cleaners. £2,000. Encourage East Dulwich dry cleaners to become eco dry cleaners. Currently dry cleaners use Perchlorate chemicals which can be carninogenic. Other chemicals can be less eco damaging.

 I had also applied to other wards for CGS projects which were rejected:

– Expanding Dulwich Library £5,000

– Crime prevention funds for Village ward, College ward, Peckham Rye ward. Really disappointed by this as easy cheap measures to reduce crime have not been adopted. Some fellow councillors seem to view crime prevention as purley a Police matter.

Missing 50,000 residents

One of my councillor colleagues testified to the London Regional Parliamennts Select Committee regarding the 2011 census. The MPs heard a unified message from Newham, Southwark and Westminster councils about how hard it is to count residents.

Each resident attracts roughly £600 of funding from central government.

Currently central government believes 270,000 residents are residents in Southwark. Southwark currently has 320,000 people registered with GPs. That means roughly £30M of central government grants are not being made to Southwark.

It seems unlikely as planned the 2011 Census will close any of that gap. Worringly it could well open it up further.

GCSE results

The latest results for 5  GCSE’s A*-C including English and Maths Southwark has jumped 11% points to reach 46% getting the closest to the National average results of 50% we’ve ever been.

I’m hopeful that GCSE’s to be taken this summer will reach the national average.

Bulk Rubble

I’ve come across another residents whose had work undertaken on her home. The builders have left her with 20 bags of rubble in her front garden. By law they should take them away and leave a waste transfer note.

Once left how do you get rid of them. Southwark has a bulk refuse service but it isn’t designed to take them and why should it if workmen by law should have. Also, it could be contaminated with asbestos for example. Also, it could mean workmen start leaving bags of rubble and shirk their responsibilities.

IF the householder doesn’t have a car to remove to the municipal recyclnig centre at Manor Place what does the resident do. If they put in their wheelie bin and it noticeably weighs more then it wont be emptied.

Everyone’s stance is perfectly reasonable and justified but it still leaves the odd residents with an intractable problem.

The moral of this story. If you have work done on your home or business make sure they take all the waste with them.

Passive drinking

The World Health Organisation has produced a draft global strategy on problems caused by alcohol.

It was a roundabout way for me to read the UK government’s chief medical officer, Liam Donaldson, chapter of his 2008 annual report covering “passive drinking”, the damage that heavy drinkers wreak on others. To illustrate the extent of the problem in the UK, he reported that in 2008, there were 125,000 “alcohol-related instances of domestic violence”, that an estimated 6000 babies are born annually with fetal alcohol syndrome and that in 2006, 7000 people were injured and 560 killed as a result of drink-driving, not including the drivers.

The term passive drinking is new to me. But blimey that 125,000 would equate to around 30 instances of domestic violence every year in East Dulwich ward alone.

How green is your pet?

New Scientist 24 October issue has an eye opening article about “How Green is your pet?”.

Apparently a medium sized dog has twice the eco footprint of a 4.6Litre Toyota landcruiser (including building and drive it 10,000km every year).

A typical cat is reported as having very nearly the eco footprint of a Volkswagen Golf. This doesn’t take into account the wild animals cats kill each year.

They concluded that if you must have a pet, have one with a dual purpose such as egg laying hens, or rabbits….as long as you eat them!

I’m amazed.

Primary school admissions

This year Primary School admissions has been painful. Quite out of the blue we had unhappy parents. 120 appeals, 8 upheld.

I’ve asked council officers how many cases councillors and MP’s referred to them for help.

They’ve told me:

Labour 13 – councillors 5, Harriet Harman MP 3, Tessa Jowell MP 5.

Liberal Democrats 35 –  councillors 14, Simon Hughes MP 21.

Convervative 1.

Total 46.

East Dulwich Primary school places

Last night a meeting of the councils Overview and Scurtiny Committee met at the East Dulwich Community Centre to discuss the problems parents faced with this years primary schools admissions process.

Disappointing that barely a handful of parents could attend plus a handful of headteachers and school governors. However, the room was full of councillors and council officers. Really thought provoking presentation from Terry Parkin the lead officer accountable for admissions. Lots of searching questions that brought out lots of other facts.

Some unfortunate weird comments and wild accusations from Cllr Aubyn Graham. He seemed very confused.

Main points I took from the scrutiny:

– Idea of having quite a few pre prepared buldge class options and then activating them depending on parent demand. This de risks any future pupil predictions being wrong while the economy is in such turmoil.

– More assurance that the GLA stats people now understand what went wrong this year after 15 years of unblemished near spot on pupil predictions.

– Amazing to hear that Southwark created an extra 45 reception places and still has 17% spares places in less fashionable schools such as the excellent Bessemer Grange. Lambeth and Lewisham had to create 150 extra emergency reception places each, Richmond 210, Enfield a whopping 22 classes totalling 660 reception places. This was shocking and really put into context how well Southwark had coped.

– £30M being pumped in Southwark Primary schools to physically make them better by Southwark Council and £25M from central government.

– Southwark schools close to being in top quartile for performance but time lag from when a schools performance soars to when publicly recognised for this.

– That across Southwark175 and in greater Dulwich area 22 kids go ‘missing’ each year. They just don’t show up at the schools places they’ve accepted. It costs the council £100,000 each year chasing these down to ensure they are in a school somewhere and are safe. What a waste caused by tiny number of selfish parents.

– That the admissions department has enough officers for a normal year but this abnormal year they were overwhelmed with worried parents. These officers will be increased by three as admissions numbers are bulging for the next 5-6 years.

If you’re an East Dulwich parent and couldn’t make it last night please do feed in your thoughts and observations.