Life Long Learning - Peter Harwood

Courtessy of an article by
Lauren Higgs, Children & Young People Now 23 July 2008
Government refuses call to overhaul testing in schools

Ofsted and the government will not consider reform of testing in schools, despite recommendations from a cross-party group of MPs.
 
In May, a Children, Schools and Families Select Committee report urged the government to scrap so-called “high-stakes” assessment in favour of a less target-driven approach.However, the government and Ofsted’s official response, published yesterday (21 July), does not include the report’s key proposals, said committee chairman and Labour MP Barry Sheerman.
He told CYP Now: “As usual, the government’s immediate response has been rather disappointing. The government still has its head in the sand and has refused to bite on the core bits of our report.” Sheerman said Ofsted has overwhelming evidence that the existing assessment system does encourage teachers to “teach for the test”, which is detrimental to the long-term education of children.
However, the government does not intend to change the fundamentals of the current system.

Follow link for details
www.cypnow.co.uk/doc.

School’s out so tell me what you think about this or any other related testing topic

Did you get your SATs on time?

was it proerly marked?

Do we need SATs?

Norwich Evening News - Schools’ anger at Sats debacle- 18/07/2008

An “appalling” picture emerged yesterday of how deep the Sats testing shambles is affecting Norfolk and Suffolk with more than three-quarters of schools still waiting for correct result

The final conference for the European e-Voice conference has taken place in Norwich on May 22 and 23 at the Maid’s Head Hotel and the organisers - include Norfolk County Council.

The e-Voice project is a four year EU funded project developing best practice in e-Participation. It has been led from the Netherlands and Norfolk was the UK Partner.

The event was used to launch a promotional video which focused on myself and other councillors at Norfolk County Council called CivicSurf.

It was this project which got me into blogging. The event was well attended and succeeded in enhancing the European bond in e-governance. My summary was that Great Britain is well advanced in technology but low on trust for its elected leaders. We suffer considerable restrictions on our use of ICT as it is funded by the tax payer and currently that means no politics or reference to our blogs from our official bland County Council sites.  However, I am grateful to the government who sponsored Norfolk County Council and to the authority in agreeing to participate and support me and colleagues to do so.

Other projects it funded, such as the Young People’s voting campaign and Bus Stop 39, have won national awards. It supported the ParishCouncilnvolve project which has helped more than 50 parish and town councils develop free websites, and the Norfolk Text Pals project recently won a finalists award from the International Centre of Excellence in e-Participation.  e-Voice has been equally successful in our partner countries of Belgium, Germany and Sweden as well as Holland.

The emphasis was on how new channels of communication could run alongside and support existing ones to make sure everyone could participate in civic life in the best way for them. This has been particularly effective in engaging young people and e-Voice funded projects are part of the reason Norfolk and South Norfolk gained Beacon Status for this area of work.

The promo film of CivicSurf was produced by Napoleon Creative 

You can see their coverage of the event and link to some video interviews by clicking here.

At last Norfolk County Council’s Children’s Services Review Panel has agreed to look at how we can improve the public image of our youngsters. At the last meeting (March 19) it was agreed to look closely at how Children’s Services can help improve the image of young people by launching a scrutiny exercise to investigate the issues and report back to the Panel. It has taken me a year to persuade fellow councillors to include this item to look at how we support the image of our young people.

We spend an inordinately long time talking about them. Norfolk County Council spends most of its funds (more than £1billion each year) on young people under 18. The largest share is spent in schools who actually only have responsibility for our younger citizens for just over 14% of their lives between the ages of 5 to 16.
I am writing this post to offer you a chance to comment so that I can help represent all of my constituents not just the ones who are allowed to vote. So if you are young, and care about your views being heard, or like me closer to 95 than 15 and still wish to give your opinions, then please use the below questions as a stimulus for comments.

• Young people cannot vote until they are 18 and often don’t after that – should this be changed?
• How often do adults think of talking with the young and not just to them?
• How often do adults listen?
• Do the police and press focus on this very narrow set of its community in a fair-minded way or do they just focus on the negative issues?
• Is there any real opportunity for young people to engage in forming their own destiny?
• Does citizenship in school do it for you? (teachers and other adults are very welcomed to comment too)
• If you had control of the press what would you focus on about young people?

I am hoping to recruit a number of scrutiny “witnesses” for this project from the media and young people. I have already contacted a couple of young people, who I have previously worked with, to form part of the scrutiny group with fellow councillors. (I need not expand on what age group they will be!)

If you have views that you wish to share please leave a comment below.

If you wish to contact me directly. (email)
If you are young and wish to try another way to input to NCC then try norfolkblurb.

On Wednesday Norfolk’s Children’s Services review panel meets to discuss key issues of service provision for Norfolk’s young people. A particular item that I will be looking at is the possible use of a “surplus” school site following the closure of a middle school in my division as part of a recent review of primary provision in Norwich. The local press contacted me for comments which I offer below as they didn’t print them - so what’s new!  see report

As the County Councillor for Mile Cross together with Labour City Councillor colleagues, I have been very involved with canvassing local opinion and assessing the needs and opportunities for the area. For me there are two factors coming out from this. There is a strong need for more manageable housing for retired couples or single folk who are currently occupying larger houses than they need or want. Many have lived all, or most, of their lives on the Mile Cross estate and do not wish to move out of the area. If this site provides an opportunity to provide good safe housing for these folk then the high demand for affordable larger houses much needed for younger families may be helped. Having said this there will be a retained need for the youngsters to have some retained facilities for changing etc on the site as the school playing field requirements will be partly provide on the current fields opposite. If both of these requirements can be met then there is a good solution for the families the children and the older folk. 

Do you get frustrated when you have something to say and nobody lets you?

If it’s about anything you have read here or would like to share with my readers then please leave a comment now.

Thanks to all of you who have commented on the Academy issues.

It is interesting that the local media are still pushing this – last Thursday’s Norwich Evening News ran the headline “Admissions up at school set to become academy”. The web version is even more loaded “Puplis are keen on Heartsease academy“

Yes there was a reported increase of just 12 to 83 but this could hardly be an endorsement of the academy since no parent has been able to choose this option yet as the returns were based exclusively on the option to select Heartsease High. The academy has only just become a new option. Ironically it actually means that the Heartsease High School has increased in popularity.

In fact many parents did fill their forms in saying yes to Heartsease High but no to the academy. Members of the independent Admissions Forum, at a recent meeting, suggested that the options should be re run. In any event it is clear that parents can now ask for a resubmission of preferences since there has been a significant change in the options available. This has been confirmed in a recent reply to my enquiry on behalf of a group of concerned parents.

 A senior admissions officer wrote:

 “the authority will consider changes to a parent’s preferences at any stage where there is a material change - and a change of Heartsease to an academy would be considered in this way.”

The inference is that parents must now formally request the option to reconsider.

To contact Children’s Services please call 0844 800 8001

More comments welcome please.

I have just heard that the EDP will carry an announcement that the academy has been fast tracked because of the ground swell of opposition and that there has been no concessions to the protesters and parents.

 Andrew Adonis says the government has made concessions e.g. involving City College on the Trustee’s, and the sponsors will have to satisfy govt. with respect to exclusion and SEN policies.