Primary School admissions announced for York

Primary school admission figures for entry in September show that 94.2% of York children have been given their first preference of school.

City of York Council’s figures published today (16 April) show that 98.6% of pupils got one of their first three preferences.

The percentage of children getting their first preference fell slightly on last year’s figures, by 1.7% overall. Those getting their second preference increased by 0.4% overall compared to last year’s data.

In 2020 all children within the local authority area have secured a primary school place. The majority of children got one of their first three preferences; with the number of children whose preferences were not able to be met increasing from 10 to 19. Most of these 19 applications only provided 1 school preference which was not their catchment school. The children have been allocated a place at their catchment school where spaces are available.

The total size of the cohort starting school in September 2020 is 1860 pupils, compared to 1,837 last year.

This year all parents will receive a letter to advise them of their child’s school allocation.

Parents are also able to log in to their parent portal account at www.york.gov.uk/parentportal.

Due to the current Covid 19 restrictions the Admissions Team is unable to answer queries by telephone. Parents are being asked to email education@york.gov.uk, using ‘Primary School Allocation’ as the subject if they have any queries about the allocation.

Coronavirus York updates: 16th April 2020

Death toll increases in York

SEVEN more people with coronavirus have died at York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust sites. The deaths – the biggest daily rise since the outbreak started – bring the total number of coronavirus related deaths within the trust to 57 – compared to 50 yesterday. The trust includes York Hospital and Scarborough Hospital.

Spark new planning application

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Spark-April-2018-150x150-2.jpg The controversial Spark container development in Piccadilly has applied for a two year extension of their planning permission.

The move was expected following the decision of the York Council recently to grant an extension of the site lease. However, the organisation must fulfil several other lease conditions before any extension is implemented.

Quite how the current Coronavirus restrictions will affect this and other business development plans remains to be seen.

Call for more transparency from York Council – how many, how much, how quick?

The York Council should publish daily updates “online” giving details of the progress that it is making in dealing with assistance requests.

The proposal comes after the Council issued a media release saying that it had settled £34 million worth of claims for the governments small business support grant. The claim, contained in a media release from the Council, failed to give details of the value and total number of claims received, the number and value of those processed and the number of claims where the recipient had confirmed that the money was in their account. There was no indication of the number and value of outstanding claims and how long they were expected to take to process. There was no indication how many claims had been rejected and for what reasons.

There is a similar lack of figures for business loans, rate rebates, hardship payments, food deliveries, rent rebates, ward committee payments, use levels at the “Hubs” (that the Council set up 3 weeks ago at the governments behest) as well as the volume of work that has been passed to the 3000 volunteers who the Council says it has on its books.

At the moment the Council seems to be focusing on issuing “sound bite” media releases which encourage politicians to put their own “spin” on the figures.

The Council has been criticised for poor communications. A leaflet due to be delivered 3 weeks ago has still not been received by some residents. The information in the leaflet does however duplicate information readily available via radio, TV, social media and local noticeboards.

Now it has emerged that the Council plans 3 separate leaflets delivered from next week using Royal Mail. The promised “Our City” is still not ready and there is still no “on line” database detailing the doorstep delivery options available in the City – the County Council (which covers a much larger area) has one up and running.

There is little scrutiny of what is going on. There have been no virtual Council meetings although one will have to take place in May to elect a new Lord Mayor. The obvious option of having an “on line” discussion forum has not been taken up. No Q & A “on line” sessions with the Council leadership are taking place. Some Councillors are not answering Email requests for information.

The Labour opposition on the Council, while indulging is some public hand wringing about “not being political”, is trying to move work and funding to an organisation set up by one of their party officials.

The local Labour MP is playing every issue for maximum personal publicity and political advantage. (In fairness the Outer York MP – a Conservative – has been more circumspect.

We have a continually changing situation.

Things are not “all right”.

They may be as good as could be expected in what is a unique situation.

What people need, and deserve to have, though are up to date facts.

People can then make up their own minds about whether change is needed.