Mary Reid

It's not every day that I have a meeting with a Cabinet Minister, and it would be today that signalling problems at Waterloo left me shivering in -5 degrees on Surbiton Station for well over an hour. Missed the pre-meeting but luckily just arrived in time for the main meeting.

I was one of three representatives of councils (controlled by each of the three main parties) that had been awarded Excellent ratings, and Paul Boetang had asked to meet us. He wanted to discuss progress towards the integration of children's services (which I blogged about recently), and to identify some of the strategic issues and barriers.

We agreed that the Government needs to be setting targets and priorities for Health and for Councils that complement each other and support children.

I mentioned the fact the LEAs have to issue Statement of Special Educational Needs within six months, but that the NHS has no targets for providing the assessments that are often needed for the Statement. Children in Kingston have to wait for up to 20 months for assessments from the hospital - the NHS has to be given targets, and of course, the resources to meet them.

The BBC London News at 6.30pm led with a story about problems with offers of places to children for Secondary Schools. Every child should get an offer by March 1st this year.

Kingston has been part of a new system this year that works across all the London Boroughs. Earlier this week we learnt that it was simply not going to work for us and for seven other boroughs, in spite of Kingston submitting all the right data. We have been severely let down.

Our first priority was towards parents and children waiting to hear which school they will be transferring to in September.

So all this weekend staff at Kingston Council will be working almost non-stop to get the task finished manually. Thanks to them the letters should reach everyone by Tuesday. Hatija Bhatia (Principal Admissions Officer), Brian McDonald (ICT Manager) and their colleagues are all stars!

Yesterday was a very sad day for Education. All the key players - schools, universities, teachers and employers - had supported the far-sighted reforms of the exam systems for 14-19 year olds proposed by Mike Tomlinson.

The Government's White paper 14-19 Education and Skills ditches all that and goes back to a slightly prettier packaging of the current mishmash of qualifications.

And why? - could it be that there are more votes in parents than teachers? - or that it is much easier for the press to say 'don't meddle with the gold standard' than to analyse what would be best for young people and for the economy? The Tomlinson proposals would have meant a radical change and it would have taken some time to explain to the population at large the huge benefits that it would bring, but once past that hurdle no-one in their right mind would go back to the divisive system that we have at present.

The problem is that the traditional split between academic and vocational studies is just a dressing-up of the social class divide that has bedevilled English education. According to popular perceptions, children who 'are good with their hands' can do low status vocational courses whilst those who are 'good at thinking' can do the high status academic courses that lead to the professions.

Tomlinson gave us the perfect opportunity to knock all that on the head, and to set up a qualifications system that valued learning for life and for work. Any area of learning, from medicine to ancient history, can be of vocational relevance; any area of learning, from linguistics to plumbing, has an academic core of knowledge.

And being 'good with your hands' has never been incompatible with being 'good at thinking' - think dentists, graphic designers, surgeons, hairdressers, engineers, artists, cooks, physiotherapists, teachers .........

Take Information and Communication Technology - yes, I do have an interest, as I write educational books on the subject. (On Amazon enter 'K Mary Reid' in the search box).

It is a nonsense to try to separate the vocational elements from the academic in ICT. The theory within an 'academic' A Level or GCSE has to be understood through the development of the student's IT skills and through case studies of real life implementations; the work-related elements of a 'vocational' A Level or BTEC have to be interpreted in the light of the underlying computer science. Neither can stand without the other.

Yesterday I blogged about Holly Robertson, Kingston's e-democracy project officer, so was delighted to see her featured in an article More Power to the People in the Guardian today.

The projects she manages at Kingston are part of the National Project for Local e-Democracy, which I also blogged about recently.

Roy Taylor (Kingston's Director of Community Services) and I have today welcomed two visitors from Minnesota to Kingston. Scott Neal is the City Manager (ie Chief Executive) of Eden Prairie, a suburb of Minneapolis, and Griff Wigley is an web consultant from Northfield some 40 miles away. Both are key people in the Civic Leadership Weblog Project.

Scott is a keen blogger and his Blog from City hall is, as far as he knows the only one by a City Chief in the States. He has been acting as a role model for all of us.

Griff is a real blogging evangelist - full of insights and good sense. He is acting as our tutor, encourager and critical friend.

Griff is also blogging about the whole trip to England in the ReadMyDay Project Blog.


(Holly, with Scott, Roy and Griff)

Scott and Griff met Holly Robertson, who is our e-Democracy Project Manager at Kingston. She has done an excellent job over the last year, embedding our e-petitions, online surgeries for young people and developing our work with BBC iCan.


(Griff, Scott, Roy and Bruce)

Kingston's Chief Executive Bruce Mcdonald happily chatted with Scott about the differences and similarities in their roles. Fire and Police are the two key services in Eden Prairie, but education is managed by a quite separate School Board.

We were all fascinated to hear that Council over there consists of an elected mayor and five council members. The council members are all politically neutral, and are not allowed by law to form political groups.

In fact, they are not allowed to meet to discuss anything outside the Council chamber. "What, not even at parties?" I asked. Apparently not - if they are all due to attend the same function they have to declare this in advance. This is to ensure open debate and transparency of decision-making. But it doesn't sound too sociable - can't see it going down with the Lib Dems of Kingston. Also, I'm not sure how it would impact on the two couples on the council here (including me.....).

A quick meal in Wagamama's, then on to an Executive meeting in the Guildhall. Scott presented our Council Leader, Cllr Derek Osbourne, with a key to the city of Eden Prairie. Derek was rather hoping it would open a large American car.......


Scott Neal, on right, presenting the key to Eden Prairie to the Leader of Kingston Council, Cllr Derek Osbourne. (Photo nicked from Griff Wigley)

For over a year I have enjoyed the fascinating and challenging role as Chair of the National Project for Local e-Democracy.

Today Local Government First published my article on the project, under the title 'Tomorrow's technologies' - not a title I would have chosen since the Internet and mobile phones are very much the technology of today.

The article is not online so I will reproduce it here ......

Citizens are not interested in local government, do not know how to contact their councillors, believe they cannot influence decisions and do not bother to vote. Local democracy is withering and elected representatives are losing their authority to act.

This perceived wisdom may be overly pessimistic, but it highlights the problem of a growing democratic deficit.

Two solutions present themselves: reduce even further the powers of local government, or look for new ways of getting citizens involved in the debates and decisions about their communities.

A good starting point is to ask myself about the methods that I use to engage citizens. How do I provide information to my electors? How do citizens contact me? How can citizens get involved in the decision-making process? How can the community set the agenda for policy development? Is my council’s decision-making transparent? Are our democratic processes fully inclusive?

Most people use modern methods of communication, such as mobile phones, texting, email, websites, online chat and interactive digital TV. Can these be the catalysts for democratic renewal?

The ODPM has been funding a £4 million project to encourage local authorities to use these communication channels more effectively. It is not a technical project; instead it has been exploring the potential of these technologies to improve democratic engagement.

The National Project for Local e-Democracy is one of the twenty-two ODPM-funded National Projects for local e-government. This National Project, uniquely, has councillors on the Board, alongside local government officers. The three councillors (Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Labour) act as Chair and Vice Chairs, and our task has been to make sure that the significance of political activities in a healthy democracy is fully understood and accommodated in local practices.

The Project has initiated over twenty pilots, led by local councils across England. These have developed a range of tools that can be used by councils, councillors and citizens.

Councils may want to implement online consultations and citizen panels, forums, e-petitions, email and text alerts, decision tracking systems or webcasting. They will be able to draw on all the case studies from the pilots as well as from other e-democracy projects, and will be able to share learning with other authorities. The National Project will also offer guidance materials, training resources, business planning templates, and some software tools.

As councillors, we may be more interested in the national database of councillors, online surgeries, civic leadership weblogs, or an analysis of councillor websites.

The resources of a Council cannot be used to promote political activities, but we may find it difficult to compartmentalise our own activities into the political and the civic. To untangle these issues, especially around councillor websites and weblogs, the National Project is issuing legal guidance on e-democracy for councils.

Some of the most significant tools coming out of the National Project are those which will be directly accessible to citizens, such as websites designed with inclusion in mind, or for specific groups such as young people or the elderly. Civic participation can be encouraged through parent and child classes, computer simulations and games, or via third parties like BBC iCan.

All these tools, and many others, are supported by an extensive pool of knowledge, based on research, case studies and policy documents.

Local authorities should be free to choose their own tools for democratic renewal, so one of the most important outputs will be the ‘How to do e-democracy’ toolkit. This will guide a local authority through the process of determining the tools that are most relevant to their needs, built around the themes of young people, consultation, mobility, community, and policy development.

The National Project for Local e-Democracy will be launching its products in March, all of which will be available from www.e-democracy.gov.uk.

(Note that the website will be launched fully very shortly)

Congratulations to Steve Webb, Liberal Democrat MP for Northavon. You may have seen him on the Channel 4 Political Awards last Monday - he won the Hansard Society Award for the politician who has made best use of new technology to encourage participation in politics.

I enjoyed a little reflected glory in absentia, having designed his website. But Steve is pretty unique, because he has developed and manages his e-consultations by email and text from his own laptop.

Those clever people at MySociety have come up with natural sequel to FaxYourMP - WriteToThem.com. This time it allows you to find who your councillor, MP, MEP or Assembly member is and then email or fax them a message for free.

Apparently it only rains on 16 days each year in Fuerteventura in the Canaries. So why did four of those days occur during my one precious week in the sun?

Heavy rainfall there has much the same impact as heavy snow in London - everything grinds to a halt. The roads have no drains so quickly became shallow rivers, houses leaked and the power supply was cut.


Fuerteventura is literally a desert island. The ancient volcanic rocks are overlaid with fine golden sands blown over by a sirocco wind from the Sahara, creating excellent beaches and extensive sand-dunes. And on one of the days when it didn't rain, the sand-laden wind obscured the sun and salted our faces and hair.

The day before we travelled, the New Zealand Herald carried a story 'Human trade in misery and hope'. It described the Africans who make the dangerous 60 mile crossing to Fuerteventura in flimsy craft, and their fate in the hands of the Spanish authorities. Many of them have been the victims of traffickers.

The same story had appeared in the Indie a couple of days earlier, which was where I had first read it. But I'm deeply irritated by the way the Independent charges you to read the stories online - why don't they cover the costs through advertising like most other news media?

Yesterday we learnt that the £885 million spent since 1997 on anti-truancy measures had no effect at all on unauthorised absence. See the BBC item Schemes fail to dent truancy rate, which also has a link to the National Audit Office report.

I was about to leave for a conference (it was the one that looked doomed after the conference centre was burnt down, but it had been successfully relocated) where I was going to explain how we had cracked the truancy problem at Kingston. Our figures for unauthorised absence from schools had moved from 9th best in London, to best in London, and then to second best in the country over a period of three years - and all at minimum cost.

But before I left the house I got a phone call from Sky News, asking me to do an interview at 12 noon. A car was sent to take me to the studio, I was rushed through makeup and then found myself in the news studio waiting for a three minute slot immediately after the main headlines.

Although I've done a number of TV recordings, I've never done a live studio interview before, and I find it very difficult to remember what I said!

But I do know that in the interview and later at the Conference I praised our very talented Principal Educational Welfare Officer, Ming Zhang, who had tried all kinds of imaginative ideas.

These include:

* First Day Response - schools phone parents as soon as a child fails to appear

* Truancy Sweeps - police and EWOs travel in the van to all the homes of children missing on a selected day. The BBC followed one of these in October. (The picture shows the Director of Education Patrick Leeson, Superintendant Duncan McPherson and me alongside the truancy patrol van last summer.)

* School Attendance Panels - multi-agency casework meetings with persistant truants and their parents to explore problems and solutions

* Flexible learning scheme - individual programmes of home tuition and part-time schooling to ease reluctant attenders back into school

* Family Holiday Discounts offered by local travel firms during school holiday time to discourage holidays being taken during term time.

The philosophy is to expect the child to get back into mainstream education but to use all kinds of strategies to overcome the barriers. Sometimes this means directing intensive support to chaotic families.

Beating truancy does not need a lot of funding - just an intelligent and imaginative use of resources, and a commitment to working in partnership.

Some radical changes in how we deliver services to children are planned for the next couple of years.

The initial impetus for these was the Laming Report into the death of Victoria Climbie. In a speech in Jan 2003 Laming said:

"Victoria was known to no fewer than four social services departments, three housing departments, two specialist child protection teams of the metropolitan Police. Furthermore, she was admitted to two different hospitals because of concerns that she was being deliberately harmed and was referred to a specialist Children and families centre managed by the NSPCC." ... and she was also on the roll of a local school.

There were many shortcomings in the way she was managed by some of the professionals, but instead of simply dropping the blame on frontline staff, Laming called for integration of services to children, with information shared between agencies as a matter of course.

I applaud the government's action in response to this. The green paper "Every Child Matters" was followed rapidly (in Government terms) by the Children Act in 2004.

Each top-tier local authority has to appoint by 2006 a Director of Children's Services, who will have responsibility for both education and social services for children and families. A lead member must be appointed as well.

Each local authority must put in place systems for sharing information about the children they care for with their partner agencies in health. This poses a lot of problems. One is that hospitals, GPs and councils all use different IT systems. Another factor is that there is not a shared vocabulary; for example, the term "assessment" means very different things to different professionals. But these problems can, and must, be overcome.

The next stage will be setting up a local Children's Trust, to bring together local authority and health partners, although how this would work is still under consultation.

In Kingston we have responded to this programme by creating a Children's Services Development Board, chaired by our Chief Executive, bringing together the senior managers of all the agencies. We have an information sharing system in place for vulnerable children. I have already taken on the lead member role.

In Laming's words: "I hope that never again will any senior manager or member be able to say 'But I did not know. Nobody told me.' "