New children’s play plan for York to be discussed

A new plan for play provision in York will be considered at a meeting next week.

strimming needed under play equipment in GBrange lane park

Strimming needed under play equipment in Grange Lane park

The City has £415,000 available to invest in new play provision. However, many existing sites are being excluded from consideration for improvement because they have “recently” had investment from the Playbuilder programme, the National Lottery or similar.

That means that 4 sites in Westfield – Chesney’s Field, (Foxwood Lane) Playbuilder 2009/10, Grange Lane Playbuilder & Yorventure 2010/11, Acomb Green Big Lottery Fund 2012 and Cornlands Road 106 and Yorventure – will not benefit.

It seems a shame to us that resources are not to be distributed based on the number of children resident in each area.

Westfield’s newest playground – located in the Cornlands park – is increasingly popular

It does mean though that some playgrounds, like the one in the Tedder Road park, may qualify for an uplift. The absence of a playground aimed at children living in the Kingsway West area has been an issue for a long time so perhaps that neighbourhood also may benefit.

Suggestions are being invited through the summer edition of “Shine”

The report also talks about high usage playgrounds being inspected each week to ensure regular maintenance and repair work is carried out.

Walk to School Week from Monday

Over 8,000 pupils across the city are getting ready to take Walk to School week in their stride between 16 – 20 May.

walking bus 2 Twenty nine primary schools in York are taking part in this year’s campaign to encourage even more children to walk, cycle or scoot to school.

Walk to School week enables children aged five to sixteen to take part and do at least 60 minutes of physical activity that gets their heart beating faster than usual – which they’re encouraged to do every day to help them keep fit and healthy.

Regular activity is also important for adults and it is recommended that adults make sure they’re active for just 30 minutes each day, or 150 minutes a week. Just walking their children to school and back each day will meet this target for adults.

The scheme is also targeted at families who normally take the car and encourages them to consider walking, scooting or cycling to school instead.

Residents can find out more about changing the way they travel in York at: www.itravelyork.info/

Nine Children’s Centres in York under threat

The council says it is “planning to make Children’s Centre services a key part of new Local Area Teams being created to support families in the crucial early years of a child’s life and through into adulthood (up to 19 years old or 25 years old for disabled young people)”.

However, the consultation talks – in the small print – about exploring “for each of our buildings if transferring ownership and management to partners and communities could save money but still ensure services for families“.

It is clear that the Council plans to de-register its children’s centres and hand the buildings over to third parties including possibly the burgeoning number of independent “Academy” schools.

Effectively parents and neighbours would lose their influence over how – or even if – the centres operate.

The Council line is that they will “locate services in local communities – providing access to community health services, parenting and family support, early education and childcare, as well as links to training and employment opportunities for families with children aged under five.

The consultation is being shared with service users and professionals across the city. The proposals recognise that the council needs to be able to help those in most need at the earliest possible stage, so that every child in York has the best possible start in life, that issues in later life are prevented and so that the need for more intensive and high-cost interventions are reduced.

As part of the new approach for families the proposals are that the council will:

•Ensure support for all families through Health Visitors, good quality childcare and groups for families that provide social, supportive and developmental activities.
• Do more when families need us most which could be as simple as talking to someone, through to support around post-natal depression or domestic abuse.
• Make the best use of existing buildings and staff. Every year over 20 per cent of the Children’s Centre budget is spent on the buildings. The proposals are to reduce this in order to maximise the number of staff working with families, where the families need them”.

Nearly 95 per cent of York children get a place at their first choice of primary school

Today (Monday 18 April), primary school admission figures are published for entry in September 2016 and City of York Council is pleased to announce School children that 94.4 per cent of York children have got their first preference and that 98.5 per cent got one of their first three preferences.

The percentage of children achieving their first preference has increased by 2.1 per cent between 2015 and 2016.

The number of online applications for primary school places has continued to increase. Parents who applied online will be notified of their child’s place by email at 10am today, letters are being posted today to parents and those with online accounts can log in to the council’s parent portal at www.york.gov.uk/parentportal.

In 2016 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 being reduced from 36 in 2015 to 27.

To meet growing demand for places in the west of York, 15 additional places were created by working with Acomb Primary School. Meanwhile, work continues in Southbank to meet a forecast growth in demand for places in the area.

This year’s admissions figures, compared with last year’s are outlined below:

	2015	2016
	qty	%	qty	%
1st	1828	92.3%	1853	94.4%
2nd	83	4.2%	71	3.6%
3rd	26	1.3%	10	0.5%
4th	4	0.2%	1	0.1%
5th	3	0.2%	0	0.0%
Placed outside preferences	36	1.8%	27	1.4%
Total	1980	100.0%	1962	100.0%
Applied Online	1706	86.2%	1795	91.5%

York Lib Dems oppose academy school plans

York Liberal Democrats have written to the Government opposing plans to force all schools to become academies.

In Westfield, the Hob Moor school recently announced plans to become an Academy amidst confusion about how its PFI debts would be paid.

Hob Moor School

Residents also questioned how parents and the local community would be able to influence the polices of what is a major neighbourhood asset sited in a relatively poor area.

Specialist services for those with Special Educational Needs are provided on the campus which is also a base for Surestart services.

The Conservative Government has said that all schools will be expected to become, or be in the process of becoming, academies by 2020, with all converted by 2022.

In a letter to the Education Secretary, local Lib Dems say they are opposed to “forced academisation” and raise concerns about the ending of the current accountability of schools to elected local councils.

The letter raises concerns about whether councils such as York will be able to fulfil their remaining education duties under the new system, such as school place planning and protecting vulnerable pupils including those with Special Education Needs. It also criticises the proposal to end the role of parent governors and says the Government has revealed no plans to help councils with the costs that they will face in the conversion of schools.
(more…)

More children walking to primary school in York

Even more schools in York have been recognised for their work in helping to make their local areas safer by reducing car journeys and using sustainable forms of transport such as walking, cycling and scooting.

Three school are following in the footsteps of Archbishop of York Junior School, who achieved the gold award in Autumn 2015, by becoming the latest schools to sign up to a national road safety campaign.

Our Lady Queen of Martyrs RC Primary School, Bishopthorpe Infants School and Robert Wilkinson Primary Academy have all achieved a bronze award and are a step closer towards gaining a ‘silver accreditation’.
(more…)

Free young persons bus travel trial flops in York

The Councils offer to provide free bus travel at weekends during January and February appears to have flopped.

During the first weekend in January, fewer than half the number of young passengers travelled by bus than had done so on the equivalent weekend in 2015!

The floods were blamed for a downturn in bus travel generally.

However, the following two weekends were also a disappointment for those who thought that cost was discouraging bus travel.

Figures revealed that a similar number of young people travelled by bus as had done so in January 2015.

The low take up means that only £28,000 of the allocated £100,000 budget has been used.

A meeting on 11th February is being recommended to terminate the trial at the end of February. It is likely that a survey of young people will be undertaken to try to better understand their transport needs.

New project helps York children with emotional and mental health needs

To support teachers concerned about children and young people with emerging mental health needs, a new well-being pilot project has been set up in York to explore how to respond to this challenge.

The well-being pilot project is a joint initiative between City of York Council, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) and two clusters of schools, which aims to strengthen the emotional and mental health support arrangements for children and young people.

Alongside the idea that children and young people’s mental health is everybody’s business, additional mental health capacity and expertise is being provided to schools by new School Wellbeing Workers.

These workers will focus on providing training, offering support and advice to pastoral staff, and delivering individual and group work to children and young people.
(more…)

Advice on apprenticeships available at York drop-in session

Young people will be able to find out more about apprenticeships, vacancies and alternative routes to higher education at an event on Thursday 11 February.

Advisers will be on hand to speak to young people, parents and carers at the Castlegate Centre between 4pm and 7pm and offer careers advice, including information on apprenticeships.

In York there are currently a wide variety of Apprenticeship vacancies being advertised covering; business and finance, hospitality, lab technicians, construction, creative and cultural, digital marketing and social media, engineering, I.T, health and many more.
(more…)

Hob Moor schools may become an “Academy”

The media are reporting that the Hob Moor and Hob Moor Oaks schools may be amalgamated with the controversial Ebor Academy Trust. The Trust recently announced plans for a 410 pupil “creative arts” school on the former Park and Ride site on Moor Lane. Opponent’s feared that a new school would siphon off pupils from other local schools including Woodthorpe, Dringhouses and Hob Moor.

An academy is an independent school funded by the state. An independent appraisal of the trend towards schools becoming academies can be found on the BBC web site

The Hob Moor schools are located in relatively new buildings which were built by the York Council in 2005. They continue to be maintained using private finance Initiative (PFI) funding.

New Hob Moor school been built in 2005

The school has had mixed academic results over the years. The most recent OFSTED report in 2013 rated both schools as “good”.

Becoming an academy would remove the provision of support from the local authority, such as their advisory services, special educational needs (SEN) and disability support services. If a school does not purchase services like these from the local authority, these may well become more expensive for schools to procure since individual academies would not benefit from the same economies of scale as the local authority.

Academies are their own admissions authority and, therefore, set their own admission policies. They are at present required to abide by the admissions code. Whilst academies cannot choose their intake, there is some evidence that academies intakes are not representative of their local community. Academies also have a higher exclusion rate than other types of schools.

Parents can complain to the school. However, academies are not part of the local authority family of schools and, therefore, if parents or neighbours are not satisfied or are unhappy with the outcome, they cannot complain, as they can now, to the local authority or their local Councillor to ask them to intervene.

Academies are not required to have community representatives on their governing bodies (but could choose to do so). The Hob Moor school is an important part of the local community. It includes a “children’s centre”.

Like most school sites there are sometimes complaints from neighbours about activities on the site or related to it..

The absence of a broadly based school governing body would represent a risk for relations with future parents, neighbours and other users of the site.

The school has promised to consult widely on their proposals.

Those consultations should include public meetings, open to the whole community, together with an advisory ballot aimed at giving (at least) every parent a vote.

Cllr Andrew Waller

Local Councillor Andrew Waller (who wasn’t consulted before the school issued their statement of intent) comments,

“we believe that the community is best served by schools which remain in the family of local authority schools with local accountability.

At this stage we know no more about the process of consultation with parents than what was in the newspaper but there is the issue of the need to consult with the wider community who have a stake in the future operation of the school. I believe that the whole community should have a say in the matter (accepting that legally it is simply a vote of the governing body which decides the outcome of this matter)”.

« Previous
1
…
18
19
20
21
22
…
39
Next »

York commentary archive site