It seems to me that many have missed the point on this fiasco.

As a member of the steering group that set it up the Norwich Walk in Clinic, I am appalled at the miss information that has been allowed to go unchallenged particularly by local Conservative politicians in Thorpe St Andrew where the Clinic is situated.

Norwich Walk in Clinic

As one of the Labour Government’s new initiatives the original concept was and remains sound. That is to make the simpler but important medical services available over wider hours and to many harder to reach people. Two target groups were men who tend to generally be more reluctant to go to GPs until they really have to, and young women needing access to emergency contraception or advice.

Another misconception is that it serves only the leafy suburbs of Norwich. In fact when we set it up, Sainsbury PLC was very helpful in sharing some of their detailed data of likely clients. Without betraying any confidential information I can assure you that its and the WiC’s clients are very widely spread throughout Norfolk, not just Norwich. The most misunderstood part is, of course, that any potential closure is related to the new provision of a Doctor lead service to be located in the centre of Norwich. The new Darzi clinic is not Nurse lead and will provide a different service to that currently provided at the Norwich (Dussindale) WiC. The proposed closure in April next year is related to finance, not need or type of provision.

Another anomaly is that, yet again, GPs are against the Darzi  Clinic probably for the same reasons as they were against the WiC when it opened. We need to remember that GP practices are contracted private businesses. One final message to the unelected PCT taking these decisions is have they considered the potential impact on the hospital A&E who would otherwise take a significant proportion of current WiC patients?

Click for Evening News coverage.

If you have any views on these issues and wish to share them please leave a comment below.

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

see also BBC commentary

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.

Dear Sir

After reading the EDP editorial of 26/02/08, I’m afraid I can’t help but wonder how the EDP can profess to have “its roots firmly fixed in the local community” -as stated on your website under the heading ‘About Us’. If the EDP indeed does have its roots firmly fixed in the local community, may I ask why it is not representing the views and feelings of the local community? Surely the views of over 1500 local residents should not be dismissed in this manner. The fact that Norfolk County Council have already dismissed the views of the local people is insult enough!

The EDP has “stated quite clearly that it supports an academy for Heartsease“, may I enquire if that means that it supports the academy programme in general or is it the sponsorship of Mr Dacre that is the important factor here? I should also like to take this opportunity to remind Mr Dacre that he has publically stated that; if the people of Heartsease do not want his sponsorship, he will take his money elsewhere. The local opinion expressed by over 1500 people of the Heartsease area, by petition to Ed Balls, surely makes it very clear that in fact the people of the Heartsease do not want Mr Dacre to have any involvement in the education of their children. Perhaps, as a Christian, Mr Dacre should stand by his word and take his money elsewhere.

I also find the “fury” in the comments of Mr John Drake somewhat un-Christian like and particularly insensitive, both culturally and socially. Leave education to educationalists, not entrepreneurs and religious groups (of any kind).

Yours sincerely

Sue Burnett-Thomas
Parent Governor Heartsease High School

The below is a letter from one of the campaigning parents from Heartsease High School as sent to Norwich Evening News and Published on 25th February 2008. Martine has kindly agreed to allow me to use it here. I WOULD VALUE YOUR THOUGHT.

“In reply to Roy Hansell’s letter (Mon18Feb), we have researched very thoroughly, went to consultation meetings, council scrutiny meetings and we are in e-mail contact with other parents who have been through this in their areas before we started our petition. 1537 people who signed the petition also agree with us.

Meetings with the sponsors, why? We went to the consultation meetings only to be exasperated at no real information and every question blatantly ignored. I spoke to Mr Dacre on my own after a consultation meeting only to find a gentleman who belittled me, was arrogant and told me that the children from the feeder schools were nothing to do with him - not really the way to encourage you to support his cause was it? In fact it was this that made me look further into what an academy meant.

I appreciate that you have read the latest information sheet from an academy but surely any leaflet from any school is only going to self publicise itself and is not really a reflection of the school. What you should do like us is contact the people it has affected in those areas because we have. Clare Fletcher from the Lewisham area through e-mail contact have told us that since the Academy has been up and running in her area the very people it was supposed to help i.e. the underachievers cannot get a place in the academy. These children now have to travel miles to go to school, even though the school is on their doorstep. Is this what you meant by citywide benefit? Is this what the future generations of Heartsease children can expect?

Most claims that academies are doing better are misleading as they are not equally funded as a comparison to other schools. I am sure that if the other high schools in the area had as much money pumped into them as academies do they would do just as well. The majority of up and running academies initially remove all those children which are underachieving or mischievious, an example of this being a school in Tyneside that removed 86 children either by exclusion or asking the parents to remove them voluntary so as not to be a mark on their child’s records. This information is from the parents themselves despite assurances at the start that they would help these very children.

I would like to put a fact straight - Heartsease was not a failing school it was an improving school. Heartsease has made great gains after special measure five years ago and has spent five years gaining due to the very hard work of the teachers and children. There are two failing schools in Norwich that the money could have much better been spent on but for some reason the sponsors dont want to. Is this because results are improving all the time so half the work has been done for them in raising standards?

Have you actually been round the school? I invited Mr Beverley a councillor to see the school for himself after making a uniformed decision at the scrutiny committee. Despite a promise to do so he went back on his word. These have been the sorts of elected people who have made all the decisions on our behalf including our ward councillor Mr George Nobbs who assumed we wanted this without any contact with his ward to ask our opinion on it.

As for £20 million no longer being spent on improving our children’s education what gloss. It will take all of the £20 million to build a up to date Eco friendly building and if you honestly believe that children’s education improves just because of a new building you should ask the parents of the new primary which has been fraught with problems and who would have preferred the old spacious buildings that were there before. If £20 million is available from government then 20 schools could have had £1 million each or 40 schools could have had half surely that would have been a better way to spend the money.

Finally if Mr Dacre and Bishop Graham’s idea of an “open” academy is to be open with children and families. Why is it then that when all the parents attended the open night to choose their child’s high school they did not receive literature showing the plans of the new building, teaching staff and support staff plans, design, the vision, details of governance, that they will have a “sacred room” and a pastor for their child’s wellbeing, community involvement, reference to uniform, details of admissions and time-line of the building work. If you know where to look on the Internet you will find the education brief which details some of this. Surely this document should have been given to parents to make an informed choice, as it was the parents were sold Heartsease High School. Can you not wonder why parents are worried about what is going to happen to their children. Perhaps “open” means something else to them.

And for the wider community well they still have not been open enough to inform the football teams or the archery teams of their plans and whether it would include them still using the school playing field as they do now if the academy goes ahead.”

Martine Lofty “& Co”

Vitamin D intake increased for Norfolk residents following the appearance of the wonderful big yellow ball in the sky. See gallery.

Open Academy is on hold and there may be some changes following further representations to Secretary of State Ed Balls.

Tuesday 19^th February, Ian Gibson again met with Ed Balls to discuss the future of the contentious proposal for a new academy to replace Heartsease High School. He carried a petition from about 1500 local residents and parents. The SoS has clearly now measured the level of opposition to this proposal and had been seriously misguided by his officials. Unfortunately the proposal is scheduled for this September so there is little time to act. My guess, and it is only that, is that the proposal will be watered down to address the dislike for the nature of the “Christian Ethos” and the control that the sponsors will have.

EDP - Steve Downs Report

EDP- Graham Dacre hits back

With reference to Dr Ian Gibson’s MP previous comments, the EDP quoted Mr Dacre as saying “The question this begs is, what is he actually opposed to? Effectively, what is being said is that they are not against the academy, they are against Graham Dacre.”

click for full EDP report.

Comment - My observation is that that is exactly what 1537 local residents and parents have said to the government and the local authority so perhaps Ian is right to defend the interest of his constituents even against an ill advised Labour Government.

A walk out by our Liberal Democrat colleagues disrupted the Full Council meeting during the budget debate.

Monday 18^thFebruary Budget Day, once again the great budget debate was conducted in array after the Chair(man) ruled that a Conservative member would be allowed to curtail the debate on the amendment put but the LDs with a procedural motion to take the vote. Whilst legal (or so we are told) this simply isn’t cricket. After a break for lunch the Chair declared that he would not take any further such moves. Too little too late - Damage done!

It is interesting that the Tory raising this issue was the same one who had recently offended a group of parents by asking to see them in order to understand them properly. They were not impressed as they were raising significant issues concerning the education of their children and felt that their concerns were more important than their looks. One commented afterwards “does he think we have two heads?”

No wonder the public hold politicians in such low esteem.

see aslo EDP - Shaun Lowthorpe - Latest report

The boundary committee have been told to go it alone in reviewing governance in Norfolk and Suffolk.

The debate on reorganising Norfolk’s governance continues. The problem is there are too many agenda’s. In principle it makes sense for people to be represent locally by just one council then they know who to blame. However Norfolk has a very diverse range of service needs and often the delivery required in urban communities such as Gt Yarmouth, Norwich and kings Lynn are different to those in the more rural and market town areas. A logical solution would be to join the communities of common interest but alas the geography to which we are all wedded does not permit this. Although I have personally favoured a link between Norwich Gt Yarmouth and Lowestoft as the service issues are in the main similar particularly in services for children, my own interest. This doesn’t help our friends in Lynn.