Spot the tabloid writer of the future!

I got a call this afternoon from my eldest daughter, who told me a week or so ago she had entered a 'sports journalism' competition at her school. Last week was school sports day, and the 150 pupils in her year were charged with writing an article on the event.

Frustratingly, she gets really self-conscious about her writing, which in my view (it would be wouldn't it) is way beyond her tender years. Consequently I can't get her to send her work anywhere, even though I'm sure she'd get published in a heartbeat.

Anyway, the entries for her competition were judged by Alex Spink, Sports Writer for the Daily Mirror. My daughter's entry was marked equal second out of a hundred and fifty, with the judge commenting:

"Spot the tabloid writer of the future! You have taken a theme - namely the
humiliation of the teachers at Sports Day - and really had some fun with
it. Less detail than the other pieces but it certainly made for an
entertaining read. Good stuff."

I'm incredibly proud - can't you tell? - and would love to find a way to encourage her to write more. I'm also genuinely grateful to her school for constantly finding compelling ways to make schooldays memorable and fun. But for now, it's enough to know that I'm not the only one that thinks her work is great!

KCC into the community

Yesterday was a really busy day - KCC's Cabinet visited Thanet. With all the excitement and chatter of a group of school children, we boarded an 8.30am minibus at County Hall clutching our coffees and bacon rolls, and headed off down the A2 towards Margate.

First stop Driot House Margate, and a briefing on the progress of KCC's Turner Centre development. Next stop Thanet Skills Studio to see the amazing new vocation training facilities for 14-16 year olds where young people learn, retail, motor mechanics, building and computing skills. Past the Eurokent Business Park to the superb new £22m Marlowe Academy, and a briefing by the head teacher, then on to Ellington School for Girls.

We travelled through Ramsgate Harbour en route to Kent International Airport at Manston, where Infratil Chief Executive Matt Clarke briefed us on expansion plans, then back to Margate for a visit and briefing on the Margate Gateway. By now it was 1.20pm and we'd had six briefings. We walked from the Gateway to the Margate Media Centre, where we had lunch with Thanet District Council's Cabinet and senior management ahead of our web cast KCC Cabinet Meeting at 2pm.

By the time we eventually arrived back at County Hall in the late afternoon, we were tired but felt nevertheless that this had been a really great way to take "KCC into the community"!

The Barna-Bus Pre school nursery - a runaway success

After two days in Westminster this week, on Friday I paid another visit to St Barnabas Church in St James, for the launch of the Barna-Bus Pre-School Nursery.

The event was really well attended, with representatives from Church, Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and the Kent County Council Early Years Unit, Teresa Anderson, Head Teacher at St Barnabas Primary School along with parents and of course - stars of the show - the children themselves.

Father Ed Tomlinson, the real brains behind the vision talked about how the project had come to fruition. Having only just opened on May 6th some twenty six families were now atttending and by September this was expected to rise to around thirty two.

I was honoured to have been asked, along with Pippa Anderson, Head of the pre-school and of course the children themselves to plant a young apple tree to commemorate the launch. With such a runaway success already, I look forward to seeing the next phase of the project, the new Community Centre, become a reality before too long.

St Barnabas Primary School - a real treasure

Congratulations to St Barnabas CE Primary School in Quarry Road Tunbridge Wells, who have this week beaten off the competition to win the "Reading Rocks 08" story competition sponsored by the Kent and Sussex Courier and Westfield, owners of Royal Victoria Place shopping centre.

Alongside ten other schools from Kent and East Sussex, children attended creative writing classes at Royal Victoria Place. A total of five hundred stories were then submitted to a judging panel made up of staff from the Courier and RVP, and three finalists were then voted on over the course of a week by school parents and RVP shoppers.

The winning entry - "The Missing Treasure" - was penned by pupils in years four, five and six at St Barnabas, winning the school a thousand pounds worth of Harper Collins' books for the school library.

St Barnabas - headed by the passionate and talented Teresa Anderson - is an excellent school with some unique challenges. It is a testament to the head teacher and the rest of her staff that they won this prize, but no surprise to those who know the school.

I'm immensely proud to have St Barnabas, a real treasure in itself, in my constituency.

Secondary School Admissions in Kent

Having seen the number of visitors who have reached this site by searching for phrases such as "Grammar Schools" or "School Admissions Process", I felt I could offer some more practical assistance as well as spouting off about the petty, small-minded, "I'm-alright-Jack" mentality of this Labour Government, who seem hell bent on destroying selective education at any cost.

Last year my daughter left primary school and we entered, like thousands before us, the maze that is school admissions. We were at various times confused, frightened and angry, feeling that if we put a foot wrong we would be wrecking our daughter's life for ever.

I have three pieces of advice:

• Firstly, take a look at the Kent County Council Secondary School Admissions Guidance - click on this bullet point to take you straight there;
  
• Secondly, go anywhere you have to, and pay any price for a copy of "HOW TO WIN YOUR SCHOOL APPEAL" by Ben Rooney - published by A & C Black, the ISBN number is 978-0-7136-8236-6, and the price at time of writing is £9.99. Again, click anywhere on this bullet to go straight to the Amazon page (although there are many other suppliers of the same book!)
  
• Thirdly, ask advice from your Kent County Councillor - we all regularly get dozens of calls at this time of year from parents in the same situation you're in right now, and can advise and assist with the process, even though the Labour Government now won't allow us to represent parents at admission appeals... To find your local Kent County Councillor, click on this bullet to jump to the KCC website and find your local Member by party, area or postcode.

I hope within these three points, you find something of help. Remember, when you get to put your case at an appeal, don't argue as to why your child won't like the school you've been given; argue as to why he or she will positively bloom at the school for which you're appealing.

Remember in your preparation to ask the school admissions staff for the PAN (Published Admissions Number) for the last five years or so, as well as the number the school actually admitted - if the latter is higher, this will allow you to demolish the argument that to take extra "will prejudice the efficient delivery of education" as they've already set a precedent.

Ask also whether there is any 'fall out' during the school year. Most schools lose the odd one or two pupils during the course of a year or two because the family moves, or the school doesn't always suit. If this is the case, you could argue that admitting your will only push numbers up for a few months.

Don't lose heart - and good luck!

The best appropriate education for all

I see from yesterday's Daily Telegraph that the Labour pendulum has once again swung back to scrapping academic selection.

Legislative changes to the Education and Skills Bill, which would both end the eleven plus and close down existing grammar schools, are said to be supported by around fifty Labour MPs, many of whom will have benefited from a selective education themselves, because they feel grammar schools "condemn poor children to an inferior education".

Wrong.

Short sighted, bigoted MPs, happy to 'pull up the ladder' once they themselves have climbed it, condemn poor children to an inferior education.

Attacking selective education in grammar schools whilst fervently pushing for every other school to achieve "specialist status" - selecting on the basis of sports, art, drama or technological ability - that kind of cynical small-mindedness condemns poor children to an inferior education.

Wake up and smell the coffee. Against the background of failing and 'sink' schools, educational ghettos where excluding a violent, aggressive pupil places a black mark against the head teacher, no wonder there's such a wave of public support for traditional education methods.

Just because not all our young people can't be academically bright doesn't mean they should all pursue a vocational career. This 'all or nothing' Labour government doesn't have the subtlety to envision a future where all our schools should raise their sights and provide the best appropriate education for all.

And if we don't all stand up and say that, it will soon be too late, even if that means Kent Conservatives taking an opposing view to our Parliamentary colleagues.

Critical development of thousands of young people

I was contacted on Thursday afternoon by a group of young mums whose children attended a pre-school in Pembury. The nursery was run by a private individual as a profit-making company.

The problem? Increasingly prohibitive Government legislation made it difficult for small pre-schools like this one to continue in business, and it really didn't take a lot for the owner of this one to simply pull the plug. And that's just what she did - telling parents on Wednesday evening that their children would have nowhere to go in around a week. And, lest they should try and at least run it themselves in the short term, she was also selling all the play equipment elsewhere.

I can understand how increasingly punitive Government legislation can dishearten small business owners. I can even understand why it would seem pointless to carry on if your profit line was shrinking week by week.

What I can't understand though, is how a Government who pretend that pre-school education is such a high priority for their administration, would make it so hard for these providers to stay in business.

Sort yourself out Mr Brown - the critical development of thousands of young people is at stake.

The Spirit of Enquiry

What a fascinating morning! I was asked by one of my daughter's teachers to help out with their "Spirit of Enquiry" week, where three to four times a year, normal curriculum is suspended and pupils engage in an intense programme of self-learning.

This week's theme is around food and farming, and today saw a simulated outbreak of Avian flu. The whole of Year 7 split up into groups - farmers, politicians, emergency services and so on - planning their actions and messages with all the seriousness of a real emergency. I played "political adviser" to around thirty pupils, discussing the messages to the public and the media and how you'd enforce a restriction zone.

The afternoon, I was told, would see half the group in the IT suite working on laws of probability using real infection simulation software from Glaxo, while the other half worked in the lab with flasks of clear liquid, decanting their fluid into each other's flasks, adding indicator agent to show which flasks were now "infected", then using regression techniques to track the one flask which carried "the source of infection".

With collapsing "bird flu victims" and real ambulance men, I only wish my school days were this interesting. Tonbridge Grammar School for Girls http://www.tgs.kent.sch.uk/home_1.aspx?id=1:31461 truly understands the spirit of enquiry.

Secondary school admission - a right, not a priviledge

For over sixteen thousand anxious mums and dads waiting on tenterhooks to find out whether their child has been offered a place at the school of their choice, the wait is nearly over.

Kent County Council sent out almost 16,400 First Class letters yesterday, offering places in a hundred and one secondary schools across the county, and over 3,500 parents chose to receive their offers online as well. Under the admissions scheme, which was imposed in 2004 by the then Secretary of State for Education, KCC must offer every child a place by "National Offer Day" - 1st March or the nearest working day.

And whilst ninety five percent of children will be offered one of the three choices of school they put on their form, for a mercifully small five percent of families, the suspense continues through the Appeal Panel process.

My eldest daughter - who passed her eleven plus with a good mark - was offered a Grammar school, but apalling public transport from our village outside Tunbridge Wells would have meant, in the worst case, getting the first of four buses fifteen minutes before lessons ended the previous day! After a series of nerve-wracking appeals, she was fortunately offered a place at a more local Grammar. But why can't we just build in more capacity where it's needed?

One of the few things which made our experience last year a little less daunting was the assistance we got from the KCC Choice Advisers - expert education staff acting as advocates for parents, guiding them through the maze of admissions. If you're in the same boat as we were, call them on 01622 694073 or 01622 694065.

The irony is that in so many other areas, such as health, social care and so on, our Government seem fixated on personal choice. So why can't local councils be allowed to expand their selective school capacity to meet demand, at the same time as celebrating and building on the many achievements of their non-selective schools?

I well remember a previous Labour Education Minister - the product of a Grammar school education - pointlessly attempting to explain on the BBC's "Question Time" why the educational choice which has clearly been of such benefit to him, should now be denied to so many.

In Kent at least, our local politicians are clear - an appropriate, stimulating and challenging education is a right, not a priviledge.

Education, education, education...

What was it that Mr Blair said about his Government's priorities? There was nothing more important than ensuring that our young people had the best possible start in life.

So I'm a little confused at what I heard today, when discussing the Government's "Building Schools for The Future" programme - or BSF. Kent is fortunate to be a major recipient of this funding, which will enable us to renew much of our secondary school estate over the next ten to fifteen years.

The Government have allocated £1.8bn - yes, one point eight billion pounds - for renewing the nation's secondary schools.

And yet, whilst up and down the country many of our primary school children are sitting in draughty, leaky classrooms or worse still, mobile classrooms - this Government has set aside less than one percent of this - just £150m - for the same programme in our primary schools.

So it's "education for all" but for some more than others?