Today’s announcement by the Government that it is to scrap all national schools tests (SATS) for 14 year olds from next year is welcome but long overdue. It seems (despite denials) that it has taken this summer’s marking fiasco to force a decision which the teaching profession has long called for.

However, it seems that national tests for 11 year olds will carry on, and presumably therefore the whole system of school league tables which is so counterproductive and divisive, and largely irrelevant to the education progress of individual pupils. Why won’t the Government listen to teachers about this as well?

The saga of the review of secondary education in Nuneaton & Bedworth took another unexpected turn at today’s meeting of the Conservative Cabinet of the county council.

After eight months of review, debate and consultation, the Cabinet had been presented with detailed proposals to renew and redevelop secondary school provision in Nuneaton & Bedworth district. The proposals were controversial but had a clear logic behind them, with the most contentious area being in East and Central Nuneaton, where declining pupil numbers argued for two schools rather than the current three. Wrapped up in all the proposals was the apparent opportunity to achive early release of BSF (Building Schools for the Future) funding from the government, and also the assertion that this would only be possible if at least one Academy was included.

At the Cabinet meeting today these proposals were unexpectedly replaced with a new set of recommendations, which ducked the contentious issue of three schools into two, and called for more analysis and discussion pending the opportunity to find out what the latest government thinking was on both BSF and Academy funding - the goverment seems to moving the goalposts yet again.

I am not in favour of Academies in principle, nor are the Liberal Democrats as a national party - nor by his own admission is the Conservative leader of the council, and many other members of all parties. Yet they are basing their whole strategy around academies on the grounds that this is what the government wants - ignoring the Conservative party’s advice yesterday to councils to stop co-operating with the Labour government on policies they don’t agree with! The only remaining question seems to be is it two Academies or only one?

In the meantime, the uncertainty hanging over Nuneaton schools - staff, pupils and parents - is allowed to continue on into the Autumn. A very sorry state of affairs.

On Wednesday I accompanied Nigel Rock, our Lib Dem PPC for Kenilworth & Southam constituency, to a meeting at the University of Warwick with the Registrar and the Community Relations Manager. Half of the university campus is within Warwickshire (the other half in Coventry), and within my electoral division of Kenilworth Abbey. In addition the university is a major local employer, with several hundred people in my division working there in one capacity or another.

We had an interesting wide-ranging discussion covering national and local issues. I was particularly interested to hear about the activities of the Warwick Volunteers, which unusually is run by the university rather than the students themselves, and which gets many undergraduate students directly involved in projects and activities supporting the local community.

Last year I took part in an in-depth review of the Demand for School Meals in Warwickshire, which resulted in the acceptance by the county council Cabinet of a wide range of recommendations to improve school meals and promote healthy eating. The background to this was of course the Jamie Oliver programmes on TV, that had had the unfortunate consequence of putting people off school meals across the country, so that demand was down and many local authorities school meals services had been pushed into deficit.

Yesterday at the Children Young People & Families Overview & Scrutiny Committee we had our first review of how our recommendations had been followed through in practice. There has been limited but real progress in some areas, and the good news is that demand is creeping back up again and deficits are reducing. A lot more remains to be done, though, and we shall review progress again in another six months.

I am a governor at St. John’s Primary School and Nursery in Mortimer Road, Kenilworth. The road is part of the diversionary route for buses and other vehicles during the 25 week closure of the Warwick Road which commenced yesterday morning.

It was therefore the worst possible morning for the usual school crossing patrol person to be away ill, as traffic volumes were much higher than normal. Conditions were so difficult for children and parents crossing that the headteacher ended up going out and stopping the traffic personally - far from an ideal state of affairs.

Luckily in the afternoon the local police Safer Neighbourhoods team were able to respond with a PCSO on duty, and this morning the sergeant did the honours, for which the school was extremely grateful. Hopefully our usual crossing person will be back on Monday.

What this demonstrated was that there is no back-up available in the system at all, not even in such exceptional circumstances. The county council’s Road Safety Unit, who manage the school crossing service, could provide absolutely no one to cover on an emergency basis. While the legal position is clear, that parents are responsible for their children’s safety until they reach the school gate, the reality is that many families come to depend on the school crossing service to enable their children to walk to and from school unaccompanied.

I plan to take this matter up with Cllr. Martin Heatley, the county council’s Cabinet Member responsible for the Environment. While I know resources are tight, the safety of our school-age children must be a paramount concern for all elected members.

I had confirmation today that county council officers are pushing ahead with preliminary design work for a pelican crossing at Beehive Hill, Kenilworth - good news that I was able to share with the St. Augustine’s School parents’ action group and headmistess, who have been campaigning with me to make the case for a crossing on this difficult and dangerous road for school children.

We must of course be patient while the necessary processes of consultaion and final design work are completed, but I am very hopeful that the crossing will be in place before the end of the year. If this is achieved, it will have been one of the fastest (successful) crossing campaigns in Warwickshire’s history!

With a number of high profile data loss stories very much in the news recently, the spotlight has fallen on the vast quantities of personal information being routinely collected by central Government on children young people and families. Most of the data is collected and transmitted to central government by local councils, who however have no discretion in the matter - the data requirements are enshrined in law.

County councillors reviewed the full extent of central government’s data requirements this week in our Scrutiny Committee - see the committee papers at:

www.warwickshire.gov.uk/AgendaManagementSheet26-2-08

Although I accept the need for central government decision making to be based on statistically sound data, what they ask for today is already overkill and yet still growing. For school children in particular, there can be no justification for the data to identify names and addresses. Each pupil is already allocated a UPN (unique pupil number) when they enter the school system, which should be quite enough.

I think our concerns about this whole system are entirely justified, and I shall be supporting strongly all efforts to get central government to change course. 

On Monday we had yet another Government initiative on ‘failing schools’, with Ed Balls threatening to put hit-squads into any school not achieving at least 30% of students with 5+ A*-C grades at GCSE including English and Maths.

As chance would have it, the very next day the WCC Childrens Young People & Families Overview & Scrutiny Committee was reviewing the Key Stage 4 (i.e. GCSE) performance of Warwickshire schools. We are fortunate to have very few schools at around the 30% achievement level or less, but those that are serve some of the most deprived communities in the county.

Has Ed Balls not heard of the ‘Contextual Value Added’ (CVA) measure of achievement, which is the main yardstick used by Ofsted and most people who understand education? Why do he and his civil servants persist in looking at raw attainment scores? CVA is the best measure we have of the real impact a school has on its pupils - i.e. is the quality of pupil they turn out better than what they take in.

The irony is that at least one Warwickshire school that might be on Ed Balls’ hit list is nearly the top-performing school in the county in terms of CVA, with an inspirational head and excellent leadership team.

I wish national goverment would just set the ground rules and leave local people to get on with the job. Some hope …… !

Last week I attended a SACRE meeting held in the Chapter House at Coventry Cathedral. The venue was wonderful of course, especially as we were given a guided tour of the cathedral before the meeting. What an inspiring place it is.

SACRE is a most interesting body, with representation from all the faith groups represented in Warwickshire schools, including Humanists and most recently Pagans. It has a number of statutory duties, advising the local authority on matters connected with religious worship and education in schools

Today I attended the Youth Parliament Election Results event at Kenilworth’s De Montfort Hotel. 29 young people from across Warwickshire had put themselves forward for election for 8 positions - 4 members and 4 substitutes. After a record number of votes, up 19% on last year, the winning candidates were chosen. I congratulated the new members personally and gave certificates and thank you gifts to the outgoing members.

An early task for the new members will be to meet the Young People’s Concessionary Travel review panel next month, and to give us their perspective on the needs of young people in Warwickshire. The Youth Parliament has been campaigning on this issue for three years now, so I was delighted that we could announce a major step forward for them today.

Last year the Liberal Democrat group on the County Council won all-party support for a motion backing the importance of concessionary travel schemes for young people and urging action at national and local level.

I have been asked to chair an all-party panel of councillors to review this subject in depth, and to report our recommendations back to the Council. The panel held its first meeting yesterday to scope the work and establish our work plan.

An important input to our work will be the voices of young people themselves. Members of the Youth Parliament have already been campaigning on this issues nationally and locally, so we shall certainly want to hear from them, plus as wide a cross-section of other young people’s views as possible.

Yesterday brought new developments in the campaign to win a pelican crossing on Beehive Hill, Kenilworth on behalf of pupils and parents of St. Augustine’s School and Beehive Nursery and local residents.

I arranged a meeting between county officers and representatives of the School Crossing Action Group, with the opportunity for the officers to witness at first hand the problems and dangers for pedestrians - in this case at school finishing time. I feel that the meeting went some considerable way to convincing officers of the need for action.

We agreed a number of next steps, with the objective of bringing matters to a conclusion within the next month. This is a fight which I am determined to win!

I attended a regular management committee meeting of Warwickshire’s Pupil Reintegration Unit yesterday evening. The “PRU” operates county-wide as a single entity, out of five centres, and is there to help and educate pupils who have been excluded from school, with the objective of reintegrating them back into mainstream education as rapidly as possible. The PRU staff are a skilled and dedicated team, working with some often very troubled young people and achieving fantastic results.

In the past it has sometimes proved hard to get excluded pupils accepted back into mainstream schools, but much closer working with school heads under the county’s overall Behaviour Strategy is starting to break down these barriers. The objective for the PRU must be to see it as a “revolving door” - with the great majority of its pupils getting back into mainstream schooling as quickly as possible.

I attended an Extended Services conference in Warwick today. Extended Services is what used to be called Extended Schools, and is all about providing a range of services to children, young people and familes that “wrap around” the normal school day - using both school and other community facilities.

Schools have been grouped in “clusters” (e.g. a single cluster for Kenilworth), each with a cluster co-ordinator appointed to pull things together. In many cases it’s about better “sign-posting” of activities already in place within the schools or the community, but in some cases may lead to the development of new activities.

Early days, but I shall follow developments with interest.

The Schools Forum is a statutory body to be consulted by the County Council on matters of schools finance and funding, and with specific decision making powers. It is made up of headteachers, governors and other non-school representatives. As the Liberal Democrats’ spokesperson I attend in a non-voting capacity.

At yesterday’s meeting we had confirmation from the Conservative cabinet member that the proposals to change the schools funding formula - which caused huge controvery last year but were suddenly withdrawn without reason - were now dead. As schools are now being required to draw up budgets for the next 3 years, the opportunity to change the current formula (which everyone accepts is flawed) has gone - probably for a long time.

What a huge effort for nothing, and what a wasted opportunity!

I chaired a meeting of the Finance sub-committee of school governors last night. We’ve recently received the “pack” from the local authority for us to produce a 3-year budget for the school.

Uncertainties abound! Just before Christmas there was an almighty row going on about proposed changes in the schools funding formula in Warwickshire, but the Conservative administration suddenly withdrew these so leaving the status quo in place for now - but for how long? Also, as a primary school with a nursery class, we’ve been told that the funding formula for early years provision will change for 2009/10, but no details as to how this might affect us. Yet the school is asked to produce detailed line-by-line budgets covering the next 3 years. Can this really make sense?

This morning I participated in a strategic conference with a number of primary and secondary headteachers from across Warwickshire, together with senior county officers and county councillors. The focus of the conference was on the changing agenda for schools within the national and local agenda for children’s services, and the development of a shared vision for the future.

Many of the messages coming back from the headteachers were common - a frustration with too much bureaucracy and regulation, a desire for partnership with and involvement with the local authority, and a willingness for strong leadership from the county to address national priorities in a local context. My party is in opposition on the county council, but I shall be looking to see how and if the Conservative administration responds to the very clear messages we heard this morning.

I attended a meeting of St. John’s school governors this evening. I’ve been a governor there since 2003, and am currently vice-chair and chair of Finance. I also have a grandson who is at the school, and a second grandson who will start at the nursery this term.

We had big excitement this weekend when the new childrens’ centre building was lifted on to the school site by a giant crane! It’s a prefabricated building, which will be brick-clad to tone in with its surroundings. The new centre will be opening in April, and will offer a wide range of services and activities for children 0-5, their parents and families. 

Yesterday I attended a major conference organised by the County Council at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, attended by about 150 people representing a wide range of organisations involved in the provision of services for children, young people and families in Warwickshire - spanning education, social services, health, police, the voluntary sector etc. The aim of the conference was to develop priorities for the new Children & Young People Plan for Warwickshire.

The day demonstrated both the opportunities and difficulties for partnership working across so many different bodies in trying to deliver “joined-up” services, working together to avoid duplication of effort and resources. This principle is of course right in principle, but making it work in practice is not easy!

This week I attended the North of England Education Conference in my role as Lib Dem county spokeperson for Children Young People & Families. Despite the conference’s name it was held in Cardiff! This is the third year running that I have attended what is the premier Education conference in the UK.

Although overall I felt this year’s conference was less good than the previous two, I nonetheless came away with some good ideas. In Wales they are introducing a completely new 4-7 play-based curriculum, moving away from formal learning in this foundation phase. This is a bold move, based on international best practice, and it will be interesting to see how it develops. I was also impressed with the rigour that the Welsh system demands in transition planning for pupils moving between primary and secondary schools. We could definitely learn from this.