Search Results for: "secondary" ...

Mental health

Over the next four years an extra £400m is planned for talking therapies by the Lib Dem / Tory coalition government. This should mean an extra 1.2 m people suffering from depression and anxiety will be treated rather than prescribed drugs or left with no treatment. Part of this is aim for early intervention with kids where apparently around half of kids who fail to complete secondary education have mental ill health. Amazingly 90% of prisoners have mental health problems.

Sadly this will only translate into around 500,000 people fully recovering with others showing various levels of relief from their symptoms.

It’s hoped this will result overall in £270m in savings to health-care and with people cured around £480m in extra taxes and welfare savings.

This will see another Lib Dem election pledge fulfilled but more importantly so many more people without disability from poor mental health plaguing their lives and the lives of people around them.

£26M

Funny question.

Newspapers have apparently reported that the Labour led Southwark Council Elephant&Castle regeneration deal is £26M worse than the draft Lib Dem deal that the change in political leadership stopped.

By my calculations Labour’s deal is £100M+ worse but lets for argument sake go with the newspapers reported £26M.

What could Southwark have bought with £26M. It could have joined the ranks of having an Olympic 50M long swimming pool with sports centre at the Elephant&Castle. A swimming pool there would be of national significance being in the inner London.

Or, perhaps a brand new secondary school.

Or, even every home in Southwark with loft, cavity amd solid wall insulation with draft proofing thrown in for good measure.

Sadly these things are now very unlikely to pass.

Lib Dems pledge smaller class sizes to break education inequality

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg has pledged to give every child a fair start in life by investing an extra £2.5bn in schools which could be used to cut class sizes, offer one-on-one tuition and provide catch-up classes.

In a speech to Barnardo’s, Nick Clegg set out the Liberal Democrat manifesto pledge to introduce a Pupil Premium which would raise the poorest children’s school funding to private school levels.

He said: “One of the biggest challenges we face as a country is breaking this link between financial deprivation at home and educational under-achievement in the classroom. Despite all the money that has been spent by Labour, schools taking disadvantaged children aren’t getting the money they Read the rest of this entry.

Back to school – East Dulwich Education

Back to school.

East Dulwich parents and children are anticipating the start of the new school year. It’s easy to forget what a major event this is for children. It’s less easy to ignore the lack of equality in educational chances. The gap between those who have and those who have not in education is stark in an area like ours. The whole range of provision is there to be seen, from the private schools of Dulwich Village, through our popular over-subscribed state schools to those schools that some parents fight to avoid.

Things have of course improved immeasurably over the past few years. It was only a few years ago, before the Lib Dems took control in 2002, that the local education service under Labour for 44 years, having failed two OFSTED reports was deemed so dreadful that it was privatised by the Labour Government and given to an engineering firm to run. That Labour period is behind us and now, year after year, our local schools under the Lib Dems are improving above the national average rate.

At primary level, the latest results show our primary schools to be amongst the best in London and at key stage 2 we are now at the national average for the first time in Maths and English. The  pupils, parents, teachers and governors who have worked incredibly hard to achieve this all deserve our congratulations but there is still so much to do.

But being one of the best in London is not good enough when so many parents want to leave London because of their concerns about education. Approaching the national average is great progress but we are not content to settle for average.

In East Dulwich we will continue to strive to improve the facilities and opportunities available. After years of community campaigning, a new secondary school for boys is now being built at Peckham Rye.  It opens in temporary accommodation in September and in the purpose built new building next year. We wish the school well in this critical first year.

But at primary level too it is suspected there is a lack of places available. This year a few parents were offered places at primary schools in Camberwell as competition for places at East Dulwich schools exploded. It seems this was partly through the popularity of East Dulwich as a place to bring up children and partly through fewer people being able to afford private schools.

We need to move quickly to address this issue before next year. Plans are already in place to expand the number of spaces at Goodrich. We may need to go further though and look for further expansion of other schools.  Expanding St Anthony’s is an option, although in my view, only if we can ensure those spaces are available for all the community. It may be that we also have to look for a new primary school.

One thing is clear: Education in our area is improving and it is great that more parents now want their children to stay within our local schools. But education is still one of the main reasons why parents think about moving to the suburbs. This year, we need to get our heads down and ensure that our rate of progress accelerates and we make the right decisions to ensure we in the years ahead we are top of the class.   

MP’s expenses

Boy, what a series of scandals. Very sad that so many MP’s and Lords have been so outrageous for so long claiming expenses. Moats and Tennis courts. Flipping secondary homes severa ltimes in a year. I’m hopeful and sure the majority are honest to the spirit of the rules. I can understand someone having a second home due to their work having a cleaner or gardener for the second home. Assuming very modest gardening and cleaning.

I can confirm the only expenses I have as a councillor are phone bills, subscription for Local Transport Today magazine – I’m the council’s Cycling Champion. I even buy my own stamps. I did have a council provided broadband until I found out how to point the council computer via my home broadband. Could’nt stand the thought of wasting  oney with BT or the CO2 from having two broadbands modems in the house.

Four percent

This year 52% of secondary school place applicants have been successful in getting their first choice – 4% up on last year.
This still leaves so many disappointed people.
It will take years to get the three extra secondary schools we need in Southwark. Southwark schools are rapidly improving but it will take several more years before on average we meet the national average as a local authority.

This will never happen soon enough.
The Liberal Democrats started running Southwark Council in 2002. Every year since 2002 education results have been recorded as improving. How annoying that they had become so bad prior to 2002.

How angry does this make you feel?

Post Office closure announcement

I understand that the Labour Government Post Office closures programme has been announced today.

In East Dulwich it is proposed to close the Melbourne Grove post office. This really is vandalism by the Labour government of a local community resource. Secondary shopping parades all over london will be badly affected with post office closures. In a time when we need people to walk and cycle to local services to reduce CO2 emissions the Labour government seems predicated to creating car journeys. Truely bonkers.