Mary Reid

Astonishing! Around 600 people packed into the Guildhall this evening for the Mayor's Attendance Awards. Medals were awarded to well over 200 children and young people who had achieved a 100% attendance record last year.

Attendance medals date back to the late 19th century, but died out over 80 years ago. So we decided to revive the tradition, and were amazed at how it was received by the children and parents. The BBC picked up on the story, and the Evening Standard is covering it tomorrow.

This was yet another bright idea of Ming Zhang, who has once again put Kingston at the top of the league table for school attendance. with an even higher 94% attendance record.

There is a bizarre twist to this event. Medals were specially designed and commissioned in the UK, and the supplier then sourced them from China. Remember the story a few weeks ago about the bras and knickers from China that were impounded somewhere in Europe? - along with 300 rather nice medals, it seems. Fortunately, we were able to get some from another source just in time.

I just love this picture of a school bus from the website for Buckland Infants and Nursery School. This is one of the schools that is helping to define and develop extended schools in Kingston.

I've written about extended schools before. I love the idea but really don't like the term, so I've been discussing how we could brand the activities that we are planning.

The 'extended schools' programme gives us a chance to make schools and school buildings important hubs in their local communities, open throughout the day and throughout the year. They can provide all kinds of services to families and other local people, such as baby and other clinics, family and adult classes, advice sessions (eg CAB, Police, benefits), support for parents with children's behaviour, child care, family support, breakfast and homework clubs, leisure and sporting activities for young people as well as adults. All the local public services will be involved - health, education, leisure, social services, police, plus voluntary organisations.

When I mentioned this before I was accused of being 'utopian', but in fact, some schools, like The Mount Primary School, and our Surbiton Childen's Centre have been working like this for several years. There is a great deal of enthusiasm from the schools to make this work really well, and local pilot projects will be emerging next year.

So - any ideas for a better way to describe all this?

I was interviewed last week by the eGov Monitor about the Local eDemocracy National Project, and as I was reading the article today I got a phone call from Radio Jackie. They wanted to interview me about it, and the impact on Kingston.

So I talked about e-petitions, online surgeries for young people and - of course - my blog.

George Bush refused to sign the Kyoto agreement because he wanted to protect America's oil industry. With dreadful irony it is that same industry which today, as I write, is at serious risk, probably as a direct result of the global warming that he claimed was not happening.

Will he now accept what the rest of the world already knows?

It's surprising what people get up to outside the Bentalls Centre in the middle of the night! You can find out in the winning film in the Webcam Film Festival.

There were over 100 entries and they were all made at iPlus information points around the Borough.

Why do I have a blog? Read an interview I gave to IDeA.

(IDeA is the Improvement and Development Agency - a government agency that supports local government)

Coombe Girls' School has just launched its new website as part of a double celebration to mark its 50th Anniversary. And just a couple of hours after the event the website already carries pictures of the other celebration today, when Princess Alexandra opened the new sports hall and performing arts centre.

This is a school that fizzes - the young people are so positive, confident and clearly happy. They put on a lively pageant representing all aspects of the school life - and they did it with energy and charm.

The website also refers to the latest developments in its federation with Beverley Boys. Beverley is being renamed Coombe Boys and both schools will be under the combined headship of Carol Campbell from November this year.

I am dismayed by the treatment handed out to a fellow Lib Dem blogger by his colleagues. Paul Leake has been writing a lively and down-to-earth blog about the issues facing his residents in Durham, as part of the ReadMyDay project. But he has now been told by the Council Leader that his blog should be vetted by the press secretary!

Not surprisingly, he has removed himself from the political group and now sits as an Independent. I think I would do the same in his shoes.

This is a blow for the ReadMyDay project which has been encouraging direct communication between councillors and their constituents through blogs. Of course, you do have to respect confidentiality and acknowledge some sensitivities, but I am not aware that Paul violated any of these.

e-Democracy is clearly going to be an uphill struggle.

It has always been deeply ironic that parents of school-age children have had to pay premium rates just to take a holiday during the school holidays. And that is normally at a time of life when finances are most stretched. As a result many children miss important schooling while their parents take holidays that are sometimes half the price during termtime.

Some years ago Kingston worked with local travel agents to create a Holiday Discount Scheme - this gives discounts to families who book a holiday during the school holiday period. This was part of our highly successful truancy strategy.

So I'm really pleased to read that, at last, the Government is following our lead and has been discussing such schemes with ABTA. From November there will be a number of incentives for trips during the school holidays, including free child places. But people will have to book early to get these benefits.

Parliament chambers in most countries are traditionally laid out with the members sitting in a horseshoe facing a raised dais where the chair presides.

Of course our own House of Commons adopts a much more confrontational layout; indeed the facing seats are arranged to be at least two swords' lengths apart to avoid injury!

Local council chambers often use the horseshoe shape as well. This picture is typical.

I was speaking at a European conference this week and I asked : Where are the members of the public?

The next picture shows another council chamber, as a fisheye view from the dais. And you can see that the public are confined behind a barrier up in the public gallery.

What message is that giving to people about citizen's participation in local government?

I compared this with our council chamber in Kingston (below), where the furniture can be laid out completely flexibly.

We normally adopt a horseshoe, but unlike elsewhere the open end faces towards the public and everyone is seated at the same level.

At almost all public council meetings citizens may ask questions and contribute to the discussion.

This is actually quite unusual, but we have had a policy of 'Opening up the Council' for many years.

In practice, not many people do turn up to meetings in the council chamber unless there is a controversial item on the agenda.

But when they do they are welcomed and encouraged to put their views to the committee or panel.

More people tend to turn up at Neighbourhood Committee meetings, which are usually held in schools or community halls. Discussion at these can be quite lively.

This photo was taken at one of our South of the Borough Neighbourhood Committees - the space at the table is where I was sitting but left to take the picture.

The new structure of Special Schools in Kingston is beginning to take shape. Last week the School Organisation Committee agreed formally to changes in the intake at the three schools. This will increase the number of places in Kingston for local pupils with special needs and eventually reduce the numbers who are placed in distant independent schools, often as boarders.

(Picture shows me on a recent visit to Dysart School)

The new sixth form at St Philips has already been running for a year in temporary accommodation. Now that its future is assured the new building is underway. Dysart and Bedelsford will both take a wider range of difficulties, including more children with autism.

This is only the first step in a much bigger strategy. The demand for junior places at St Philips, which caters for children with moderate learning difficulties, has fallen. New units are being developed in a number of primary schools which will give children specialist care but in the context of a mainstream school. St Philips will provide outreach support to teachers and children in other schools.

A young person I know received no offers at all from the six universities she applied to, probably because of the predicted grades that she had. She ended up with two A's and one B, but the universities that she could have got into with those grades had no spare places left by the time the results came out. The whole experience had been very negative and demoralising, and I'm full of admiration for the way she did achieve so well in spite of that.

The current admissions system for Universities is very unsatisfactory. I'm not saying that it is badly administered, because UCAS does do a magnificent job of keeping track of offers and informing students.

It is the timing of the process that makes it over bureaucratic, inefficient and unfair. The whole of the autumn term in the second year of A Level studies is disrupted by visits and the completion of UCAS forms. Teachers have to make difficult predictions based on AS results knowing that students can often flourish unexpectedly in the second year, or sometimes fall by the wayside. When running A Level courses myself I remember being harrassed by students, or even by parents, to change the predictions. Then after the results come out there is the misery of Clearing for many.

The worst hit students are those who do better than predicted. They may have missed out on places at highly regarded universities, because of lower predictions, but by the time they get their pleasing results the places will all be filled. This is a very unfair system and particularly hits the least advantaged students. It also causes a lot of distress, and can demotivate students.

So it is good to hear that the Government wants to tackle this problem. But I am not altogether convinced that we won't just end up with a sticking plaster solution that will not deal with the deeper issues.

Undoubtedly the best solution is for all applications to be made after the results come out. Although there would be a lot to cram into a short time, students would be making realistic applications and universities would have to handle far fewer than the current six options per student. If the Government, schools, universities and exam boards were to get behind this approach then I would be very happy.

The other solution offered by the DfES report is to carry on much as now, but drop predictions. Offers would be based solely on the AS results. But most predictions are already based on AS results, and that is where the inaccuracy creeps in, because students' performance is not always consistent. As a compromise a certain percentage of places, perhaps 15%, will be held back until after the results were out. But this won't overcome the discouraging effect of being turned down in the first place.

I do hope that the Government makes the radical choice and adopts a post-results system, but I have my doubts somehow.

Yes, I know it's commercial, but I just liked the idea of an analogue clock on a digital platform.

The Strake Jesuit School in Houston has opened its premises to the pupils of its sister school in New Orleans. It was good to hear a positive story coming from the area on the BBC today. The Houston school thought it could absorb an extra 50 students initially but in the end over 300 refugees registered for the new term. So they have decided to run shifts, with the New Orleans students attending from 3pm to 8pm. They are among their friends and familiar teachers.

Many of the families connected with the school had opened their homes to the New Orleans families, in some cases taking in young people while their parents returned to work in the essential services back home.

After the despicable shortcomings in the emergency relief operations (which will, no doubt, be blamed on the local authorities) it was heartening to learn of the normal goodness of people.

Federal Computer Week had this to say.

MINNEAPOLIS — Mary Reid, an elected representative from Great Britain, showed two photos of rooms where public hearings are held in that country. One picture displayed a typical layout where councilors sit at wide desks facing a central desk and another offered a fisheye view from the chairman's position.

"And the question is, 'Where is the public?' " she said. "Well, they're actually sitting up in that gallery behind the green barrier that's really there above the council members. And my question is: What message is this giving to the citizen about public participation?"

In Britain, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is trying to change that. E-democracy is one of the 22 local e-government projects initiated by the office. The Local e-Democracy National Project is providing municipalities, also called local authorities, with technological tools and other information to improve civic participation, activism, networking, collaborative problem-solving and other types of involvement.

Reid, who is also the chairwoman of the project, spoke here July 26 during the two-day International Symposium on Local E-Democracy, billed as the first global conference on local democracy in the Information Age.

I have been away from my computer this week so unable to post my thoughts on the unfolding horror in New Orleans. A natural disaster of that scope is devastating, but its effects have been so much worse than they should have been because of the appalling lack of emergency planning.

I have never been to New Orleans, but I met up with a friend today who returned last week from a holiday there - probably one of the last tourists to enjoy it as it was. I hadn't realised until this week that the city is largely below sea level, protected by dykes. Given the vulnerability of the city, it has left me with some very uneasy questions about the richest nation on earth...

Why was there no evacuation plan for those without access to cars? Where were the buses?
Why were people directed to the Convention Centre and Superdome, but no plans in place to provide them with essential supplies or to evacuate from there?
Where are the armed forces? And what are the National Guard doing apart from preventing looting by the hungry and car thefts by the desparate?
Where are the helicopters?

What is going on?...................

Read this account of an interview with someone stranded at the Convention Centre.