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Secondary school admissions

A week ago secondary school admission results were released. Many happy and unhappy families across Southwark.

First preference – Southwark increased the proportion of families obtaining their first preference school. Up at 56% from 53% last year but with 85 less applicants. But the average for London was 66% of families. So Southwark is some distance behind.

Any of 6 stated preferences – Southwark parents and carers had 91% success obtaining one of their up to 6 stated preferences whereas the average for London was 95% with 88% offered one of their top 3 choices.

It’s clear that Southwark will remain one of the worst performing boroughs in the country for residents getting their first preference school choice.

How can we fix this?

We need more secondary schools that people want their children to attend. People are applying for what they believe to be the best performing school which see huge demand for the limited places and a lot of disappointed applicants.

Southwark secondary school admissions

One of the Southwark Council scrutiny committees are undertaking a review of schools admissions and support for parents and carers.  As part of this I’d encourage parents and carers whose children have applied for a Southwark secondary school place to complete their questionnaire and tell them how you think it could be improved.

Apparently it only takes a few minutes to fill out . Please click on this link to access the survey. Alternatively if you’d like a freepost paper copy  then please contact the Scrutiny team on 020 7525 0514 or email Julie.Timbrell@southwark.gov.uk.

Deadline for questionnaire responses is 13 May.

Southwark School Places

Southwark still faces a school places shortfall of 1,800.

Fortunately in the Dulwich area we’ve been working tirelessly since 2009 to stop this impacting locally. Lib Dem councillors have initiated or supported practically three new Primary schools – Harris Primary Academy East Dulwich, Judith Kerr Primary School, Belham Primary School, and one secondary school locally and one in the very north of the borough respectively The Charter School East Dulwich and  Borough Academy.

All were originally opposed by Southwark Council but fortunately they’ve become a reality – else the pupil place shortfall would be even worse. Ironically Southwark Council are now claiming ownership of these schools – you know when a campaign has been successful when someone else claims it for themselves.  It means we do not have a pupil place problem in the Dulwich area. Phew!

Mountainous New BT Phone Boxes

BT have applied for 48 x 2.9m(8’8″) high advertising hoardings dressed partially as phone kiosks across Southwark. Three of these are proposed in East Dulwich.

Southwark should charge rent as they do for similar 90 such installations by JCDecaux free standing advertising hoardings and Southwark taxpayers benefit.  But only where it is safe to do so.

Ironic that we’ve spent so much time reducing street clutter for BT to propose this. Clearly their phone kiosks aren’t being used hence proposal to replace them with advertising hoardings. The idea of free phone calls from phone outdoors next to main roads is at best fanciful.

17/AP/0805 157 Lordship Lane – outside Franklins.
The new Harris East Dulwich Primary Academy, with the support of the local Police inspector, have requested that the bus stop outside its front door on Lordship Lane be swapped with the Pelican crossing nearly outside Franklins.
So this applications assumptions about the pavement are wrong and the schools/Police proposal will require the current phone box be removed. This alone should be reason enough to refuse permission.
Additionally the idea of prominent advertising being so close to a bus stop or pelican crossing is contrary to TfL guidance about the placing of advertising where extra cognitive lading occurs (tfL guidance section 2.4-2.6).

17/AP/0882 junction East Dulwich Road on Lordship Lane
This junction is notorious to local residents for crashes and fear of crashes. The reported crash data for this junction is 10 crashes for 2012-16 inclusive. i.e. 2 crashes pa. The classification of slight crashes has included a lady with multiple fractures still undergoing re constructive surgery.
Placing prominent screen advertising at this junction would make the junction more dangerous from cognitive overloading.

17/AP/0883 junction Crawthew Road on Lordship Lane – outside Foxtons.
Half the pavement width is owned by freeholders of 29-35 Lordship Lane. The current and proposed phone kiosks are reliant upon this to work. If the building is redeveloped the pavement would be blocking the pavement.
Equally the more prominent advertising hoarding proposed will distract drivers who must turn right exiting from Matham Grove onto Lordship Lane.

Generic issues for all these applications:
– these applications are being made to replace phone kiosks placed under Telecoms Apparatus applications. For telecomms apparatus the bulk of income and primary use would need be telecoms. But the vast bulk of use and revenues will be from advertising. On this basis telecoms rules and strategies should be secondary to following advertising consent rules for planning applications.
– the locations of the existing kiosks was motivated by being prominent for people to spot. But that same prominence makes these locations dangerous for much greater advertising prominence causing cognitive overload for people driving past. These advertising hoardings would be significantly safer on straight sections of roads that are not close to junctions or crossings.
– national planning policing encouraging telecomms and IT are aimed at broadband roll out, mobile mast roll-out and deploying fibre optics. These application are clearly advertising hoarding dressed as phone kiosks and these national, regional and borough strategies for telecomms/IT should not be applied to promote this advertising.
– The specs states the screens can operate from 0 to 50 degrees C. Temperatures regularly fall in winter locally below this temperature range.
Are the screens safe below their safe operating temperatures?
– poor urban design with the proposed new free standing advertising/phone kiosks being much more dominant in the street scape at 2.9m high. This is significantly higher than the 2.2 and 2.4m phone kiosks they replace.
– Protection of amenity. The free phone call offer. The applications give no details about how to ensure unrestricted free phones in the public domain won’t be abused and used to make malicious calls and how these will be stopped.
– un enclosed phones replacing enclosed phone kiosks. At all three sites these proposed free phones are overlooked by victorian flats with single glazing. What measures will be made to avoid these phones ringing and being nuisance – will BT fund double glazing for these flats? Make them outgoing only – especially to avoid use by drug dealers? Have Southwark Police been consulted about potential issues of drug dealing?
– they will bring at best only a very negligible benefit to the area far outweighed by the advertising.
Why hasn’t the applicant stated how important these phone boxes are by stating current revenue per phone box to demonstrate their importance to remain occupying such valuable public highway?
– other advertising companies pay Southwark annual rental to place such advertising hoardings on Southwark pavements.
Why are BT not required to do so?
– no detailed policy of what restrictions and controls on what would be advertised are stated. All are very close to primary and imminently secondary schools for the protection of minors.

Primary School Come Up Trumps

I was also under the impression that the London Challenge was fab. The London Challenge was established in 2003 to tackle underperformance in London secondary schools and significant secondary school performance improvements seemed to take place. This was sos successful that it was repeated to some degree in other English cities but without the same marked results. More recent research by The Institute of Fiscal Studies suggests otherwise which I was surprised by.

This research suggests this improvement was not from Teach First and the London Challenge but the improvement in primary school results which means that London primary school children go to secondary schools with high prior attainment, which is the biggest determinant in secondary school performance.

Well done to all our primary schools. I’m sorry your huge success has been hidden by inflating the results of other interventions.

Free GP’s

We’ve had huge success getting new Free Schools to fix the lack of school places at both primary and secondary school levels. I’ve been involved in making five happen so far. Often despite downright opposition from Southwark Labour until we get huge numbers f parents signed up.

We clearly have work to get these schools fully up and running but largely supporting projects through to implimentation.

Another big issue that affects everyone is our local GP service. GP practices are private businesses. Most are run with real care and dedication from the partners. But not all. The service feels patchy with many deeply unsatisfied patients. I’ve received more casework today where a family are really unhappy but they feel they have no realistic alternative GP practice to move to. This is crazy.

What we need is the option for Free GP practice – run as with school on a not for profit basis – where we don’t have suitable GP alternatives. Where an area attracts sufficient support for a new Free GP practice that central NHS funds are provided to help a new Free GP practice set-up. I’m clear that were we to have this power we would create new a Free GP practice for East Dulwich.

Beauty of this would be real competition for customer service. The rival would be a community led not for profit Free GP practice. It would be run by trustees or governors like schools,

Do you think this is a good idea or a crazy idea?

Haberdasher’s Comes to Southwark

I am delighted that Haberdasher’s Aske’s have applied to open a new co-ed secondary school in Southwark SE1.

When their application to open a school fell through in East Dulwich I helped introduce Haberdasher’s to the parents in SE1. They’d approached me for advice about making a secondary level free school happen. So I’ve now been involved in making five free schools happen.

Haberdasher’s have the highest ambitions for our Southwark children. Exactly the type of school provider we wish to add to all our other excellent school providers in Southwark.

 

Cycle Parking Limit The Cycle Revolution

Cycling in London has dramatically increased for London residents commuting into central London. In 2011 London 8.3% of such commuters cycle – it feels much higher now.

Apart from safer routes to encourage more people to cycle, and they appear to be on the way now, people cycling have to have somewhere to park their bicycles – at both ends. Without such parking the Cycling Revolution will stall.

We need a step increase in cycling to improve public heath helping the NHS cope with its financial pressures, longevity, better mental health, fitter citizens, less social exclusion. Cycling has a strategic imperative for our society.

Home Cycle Parking – Most cyclists have to parking their bikes in hallways, outside homes insecurely, blocks of flats basements – often behind many doors. We will never have a cycling revolution with such crap cycle parking. In East Dulwich we’ve been supporting new Bikehangars which are a start. We’ll need 200 for East Dulwich alone to support half of the 25% cycling levels we could reach within the next 10 years. So far we have 4 on order!

Our planning rules must change to ensure cycle parking is really accessible to all new homes – not hidden away in marginal spaces. New houses in London only have to have 1 or 2 cycle parking spaces but in Holland it would be 5 in a proper 4m2 shed. Flats 1 o2 in London, 2-5 in Holland and easily accessible.

Destination Cycle Parking – We currently rely upon ‘free’ cycle parking – locking bikes to lamp posts, railings and the like which only gets you so far. For a step increase in cycling you must have proper cycle parking and lots of it. In London secondary schools are supposed to have 1 cycle parking space for every 8 pupils or staff or 12.5%. Dutch schools have 50-100%. London offices have 1 space for every 90m2, Dutch offices 1.7/100m2. At my workplace – a modern building – the cycle parking is so obscurely placed in the basement that I ‘free’ park outside. So we must not just box tick that parking has been provided for people cycling but that it easily accessible.

If we get cycle parking fixed at both end we will see a cycling revolution.

Are you going to be part of it?

Dulwich & West Norwood – my local priorities

If elected as your MP this Thursday my local priorities – above and beyond the Lib Dem national manifesto are:

  • Helping solve the local schools crisis through opening new schools, building in the right places. I have already ensured an extra 3,100 primary and secondary schools places locally. But we need at least another 1,500 school places.
  • Saving local libraries. Lambeth Council is planning to close 5 libraries and downsize two others. We have shown through building new libraries such as John Harvard Library that if you build better libraries more people use them more. I’ve persuaded developers to give us a brand new Grove Vale Library in 2016. I will work to persuade Lambeth Labour to reverse these avoidable cuts.
  • Creating more apprenticeships and jobs. Local unemployment claiming benefits has fallen to 3.5% but the UK average is 2.5%. Apprenticeships have more than doubled under the coalition government – they’re a Lib Dem priority – but we can all do better at creating them helping to ensure lower unemployment and higher incomes over the longer-term.

 

Harris Nunhead Primary School – proposal withdrawn

Today the Harris Federation requested that the proposal for a new Harris Nunhead Primary School be withdrawn.

Please see the letter here: Proposed Harris Primary Academy Nunhead 2

It seems unlikely that the Education Finance Agency will refuse this request.

The proposal had generated much opposition from people concerned it would reduce the amount of space for a new secondary school on the Dulwich Hospital site but also people not surprisingly unwilling to send their children the 1-2 miles from the Nunhead/east East Dulwich area to a new primary school at the Dulwich Hospital site. Harris Federation have listened to the consultation and acted accoridngly in good faith.

I am still unconvinced that we will have sufficient primary school places for local families – and am seeking to meet Southwark COuncil forecasters to review the numbers.

We now need to ensure that blocking this new primary school does result in the largest possible secondary school – without compromising any new health centre facilities.

What do you think?