Mary Reid

I'm not going to be posting anything to this blog for the next few days. The ReadMyDay project is transferring to a new platform, but once it has all been sorted out you should see a greatly improved interface.

How often do young people get a chance to take part in the process of selecting a headteacher or a senior council officer? At my suggestion we have done just that in Kingston.

We have been appointing a new Head of Children's Services and Safeguarding at the Council. This person is responsible, amongst other things, for social work with families and children, for adoption and fostering, and for services for disabled children. One very important element is the work with those children for whom Kingston Council is the 'corporate parent' - the Looked After children. So who better than a group of these young people to interview the candidates for the post?

All the shortlisted candidates met the young people's panel a couple of weeks ago. I think they were pretty surprised by the challenging and direct questions that were asked. At the final interview session on Saturday the views of the young people were fed back, and were taken very seriously by the appointment committee.

This added an extra dimension to the selection process, but it also empowered the young people themselves and gave them a strong message about how we value their judgements.

A similar panel helped with the appointment of a Children and Youth Participation Officer to cover a maternity leave back in the summer. The young people received thorough training before they took part in the process and you can read about this on the YoungLivin' site. But last week was the first time that Kingston had used a young people's panel for such a senior appointment. We must do it again.

If you would like to comment on this posting please email me and I will add your comments in manually.

You can see a two minute video of Fraser Henderson, from North Lincs, and me talking about e-democracy.

This was played on the UK stand at the EU Ministerial conference.

How often do young people get a chance to take part in the process of selecting a headteacher or a senior council officer?  At my suggestion we have done just that in Kingston.

We have been appointing a new Head of Children's Services and Safeguarding at the Council. This person is responsible, amongst other things, for social work with families and children, for adoption and fostering, and for services for disabled children.  One very important element is the work with those children for whom Kingston Council is the 'corporate parent' - the Looked After children. So who better than a group of these young people to interview the candidates for the post?

All the shortlisted candidates met the young people's panel a couple of weeks ago. I think they were pretty surprised by the challenging and direct questions that were asked. At the final interview session on Saturday the views of the young people were fed back, and were taken very seriously by the appointment committee.

This added an extra dimension to the selection process, but it also empowered the young people themselves and gave them a strong message about how we value their judgements.

A similar panel helped with the appointment of a Children and Youth Participation Officer to cover a maternity leave back in the summer.  The young people received thorough training before they took part in the process and you can read about this on the YoungLivin' site.  But last week was the first time that Kingston had used a young people's panel for such a senior appointment. We must do it again.

 

The Austrian Minister compared e-Government to a Viennese waltz ..... I still haven't worked out what that means.

He was one of the speakers at the EU Ministerial Conference on e-Government. This happens every two years, and as it fell in the middle of the UK's presidency it was seen as an opportunity to showcase British achievements. I was very privileged to have been invited to the event in Manchester last week.

The 52 finalists in the e-Europe Awards each had an exhibition stand, so instead of being sweet-talked by commercial suppliers we were able to chat with the people behind some ground-breaking projects. I was drawn to Meath Community Websites. Meath is a county of just over 100,000 people in Ireland, but in spite of its small size it supports websites for 250 community groups in the area, and is growing all the time.

The e-petitioning system for the Scottish Parliament was also a finalist - this is the same system which we have developed in Kingston as part of the Local e-Democracy National Project. The e-petitioning systems are the brainchild of Prof Ann MacIntosh at Napier University, and I told her about the Magic Roundabout petition. I was delighted when she kept drawing attention to it and mentioned it in a panel discission.

One strong focus in the conference was how to measure the public value of e-Government initiatives, and in particular, how to analyse the impact of e-Democracy. It is very difficult to predict, let alone measure, the benefits of greater public participation in terms of cash-savings, or greater efficiency, or more robust decision-making, or better services, but these clearly can all be achieved.

Take this as an example: A large number of young people in Kingston have become democratically active in support of the Magic Roundabout petition. No doubt a good number of them will turn up for the Council meeting next Tuesday to present the petition, and the young man who started it will have an opportunity to speak to the whole Council about it. I hope they will then stay for Question Time when I will be answering two questions on it. The Surrey Comet has run two major stories and is now heading up a campaign to find new trustees. Huge benefits all round, but very difficult to measure.

If you would like to comment on this posting please email me and I will add your comments in manually.

Ruth Kelly's clampdown on coursework cheats is welcome at one level. Plagiarism is all too easy - high grade coursework can be downloaded from the Web, parents can return to their studies, and teachers can 'help' a bit too much.

But I'm worried that it will simply be an excuse to remove a valuable educational tool, and return to the stultifying and non-creative formal exam system. In subject areas with a heavy skills element, such as art or my own subject - ICT - coursework is essential. Sustained project work is the only way of demonstrating the student's grasp of technique, and also gives them opportunities to think creatively and autonomously.

The problem is that cheating is a low-risk activity at present. So how can we preserve all that is valuable about coursework but up the stakes for the cheats?

Guidelines to parents, teachers and pupils will be helpful, especially as there is a genuine grey area between legitimate educational support and inappropriate help.

But we also need stronger mechanisms in place that will expose cheating, and discourage would-be cheaters.

When I taught in Further Education I adopted some quite robust methods - it can be done, but it would have been much easier if the examination boards had backed me. It worked like this. I drew up a simple coursework monitoring sheet for each project. I made notes, which I shared with the student, each time I discussed the progress of their project over the term that they spent on it. When the projects were submitted for moderation I was required to sign a document for the examination board stating that to the best of my knowledge this was the student's own work. I told them that I would not sign a form unless I had a history of the development of a project from my monitoring sheet. I then attached the form to the coursework as evidence, although the exam board was not really interested.

Occasionally I had to carry out my threat. One year a student handed in a sophisticated and skillful piece of work on the deadline date - even though the week before he was working, with little success, on a different project entirely. I have to admit that I was threatened by his father when I refused to sign the form, which effectively meant that his son would be awarded no marks for his coursework. He told me that it was my fault if his son did not get into University!

I would like the exam boards to take some responsibility by building coursework monitoring into their assessment processes. With spot checks on monitoring processes, perhaps, during termtime.

Students know all about the coursework websites. But very few if any have the skills to reverse engineer an A grade piece of coursework to demonstrate 'work in progress' along the way.

I would like the exam boards to publicise more widely the penalties for cheating.

But most of all I would like a large scale campaign to highlight and condemn cheating and plagiarism. It's a dirty game, based on lies and deceit, and it undermines the honest efforts made by genuine students.


If you would like to comment on this posting please email me and I will add your comments in manually.

A fellow writer, Anne Rainbow, has just taken part in a Write-a-thon in aid of Children in Need. She, and dozens of other writers, were attempting to write one short story every hour for 27 hours! The crime writer, Alex Keegan, was sending out prompts every hour to all the writers to keep their creative juices flowing.

It must have been totally exhausting. I find it difficult to write for more than 4 or 5 hours - after that my brain turns to candyfloss.

The best stories will all be published by Leaf Books. You can buy them in packs of 10 to sell on in aid of Children in Need.

I've mentioned before that the Government has picked up on Kingston's scheme to persuade the travel industry to offer discounts to families taking holidays during the school holiday period. The national scheme, called Every Lesson Counts, has just been launched.

It provides links to a good number of early booking deals on family holidays offered through ABTA, the Federation of Tour Operators and Enjoy Britain.

I'll be monitoring this - it's not clear how many holidays will qualify, and whilst I wish the scheme every success I do hope it isn't just a bit of early season window dressing.

I couldn't resist posting this photo of one of my sons on a family holiday quite a few years ago.

Tim Worstall, the master of the UK blogosphere, (OK, so I haven't yet appeared in his weekly Britblog roundup) has created Wikablog - a wiki directory of blogs. So go over and add yours.

I've created an e-Democracy category and added my blog - it would be good to see more in there.

No, not Dougal, Florence and co, but a one-stop-shop offering confidential advice and counselling to young people in Kingston on all kinds of matters, including sexual health.

I'm very unhappy with the news that the Primary Care Trust has decided to pull the plug on this excellent facility. It has been jointly supported by the Council and the PCT in the past, but the PCT has decided that it will now offer sexual health advice from its clinics. Sadly that does not provide advice across the whole range of issues that affect young people, and the unique drop-in atrmosphere of Magic Roundabout will be lost.

Young people have started up an e-petition on the Council website calling on the PCT to carry on funding Magic Roundabout, and I have signed it. They have already collected 112 signatures - in ONE DAY............

Lewisham Labour councillor Andrew Brown, who has been a great supporter of the ReadMyDay project, has congratulated Mark Morris, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in Lewisham, for taking on the BNP and winning in the High Court.

When you have read the full story on the blog of Peter Black, a Welsh Assembly member, I think you will agree.

Today I met Jamie McCoy, writer of Jamie's Big Voice. Although I don't think I wrote about him at the time, I was very aware of the way his blog put the issues of homelessness on the agenda during the general election. It's a stunning example of how one person can speak from the most marginalised corner of society and make a powerful impact.

He is still blogging. He has challenged politicians of all colours - most recently David Davis. And he told me about his recent visits to schools. So I've looked back through his blog and was very struck by this entry for October 21st.

Today I'm visiting a school in the east end of London to talk about being homeless and to listen to them read their poetry and maybe read a couple of mine to them. Am I nervous? Yes, just a tad. It will be only the second time after coming off drugs that I have actually been to talk about my experiences in a school. The way I look at it though is if by me telling them about my life I can stop just one or two taking the path that I did. Then it will have been worth while but looking back on my school days which I hated. I think being out there at the front for a change will be completely different than when I was at school. Because I was always sat at the back. Not that I minded after all being with the girls was sort of a pleasure. The funny thing is being amongst the opposite sex day in day out. I still never learned anything about them. Which just proves you can never really get to understand the way women think. I don't think any man can. Well it's time to enter the lions den so to speak.

Well, it was not that bad I just took one look at these kids and saw something in them that reminded me of me when I was a kid at that age. I spoke to them about homeless people. They told me truthfully what they thought and the way they saw homeless people. They asked questions which were really good ones. They read their poetry and I would love to put it on my site if they agree when they come back from half term. Today was one of the better days for me and I hope I can do it again at another school in the near future.

I've added Jamie to my blogroll. This is grassroots e-democracy at its best.

If you would like to comment on this posting please email me and I will add your comments in manually.

Sita, our recycling contractors, have just left behind a whole box of paper I put out for recycling, plus a bag of plastic bottles. I am just about to phone the Council - not because I expect any special treatment as a councillor, but because if they are not carrying out their work properly for my home then they are probably being inefficient elsewhere as well.

Door-to-door recycling has been one of the success stories of the past few years, but we do have to keep an eye on the collections - things do go wrong sometimes!

Later - within five minutes of phoning the Council Sita appeared and collected the box.

So, if it happens to you just phone 8547 5567. And let me know if it isn't dealt with straightaway.

Even later - rather bizarrely, I was being filmed by a television crew as I typed the first part of this blog. They were interviewing me for the conference video for the EU Ministerial Conference at the end of the month. Whilst I was trying to think of a sensible thing to blog about I saw the little recycling drama in front of my eyes. But have you noticed that whenever anyone wants to give an example of the kinds of complaints that people make to their local council, it is always about rubbish?

Throwing eggs and flour at Hallowe'en is an unpleasant recent development. Sometimes it's the 'trick' that is played if someone doesn't want to give sweets in response to 'trick or treat'.

So what on earth did Asda think they were doing when they started selling 'Hallowe'en eggs'? Last year they banned the sale of eggs to under 16s, but this year they encouraged them by packaging eggs with a Hallowe'en theme. I heard a spokesman for Asda on the radio last weekend, lamely trying to explain that he expected parents to buy them as a fun item and then cook them with their children!

Last year our local police in Chessington and Hook contacted all the food stores in the area and got their agreement to limit sales of eggs and flour to youngsters in the run up to Hallowe'en. This was so successful that they did not get a single complaint from the public about egg throwing. This year this approach was adopted across the whole borough, though I'm not sure what Asda in London Road, Kingston did about it.

If you would like to comment on this posting please email me and I will include your comments in the next posting.

Yesterday evening I was invited to the home of one of the people who lives near the Bullwhips. About a dozen of his neighbours turned up, along with my fellow ward councillor, Sue Baker.

The Bullwhips is one of the little-known gems of Hook - a small park on top of a hill, hidden away behind houses. It has been adopted by a large crowd of young people, some of whom have been causing problems to the people living around the park.

Now I would be the last person to demonise young people. They naturally meet up on street corners and parks to socialise - in fact, unlike adults who can drop into the local pub, they have few places where they can go to meet up with friends, especially if they don't want to be involved in organised activities. With hormones running amok they can be loud, and they can swagger around, and this can be intimidating to others.

But in this case it does appear that some of the young people that use the Bullwhips have also been damaging property, throwing stones and abusing people.

James Ellis, our Neighbourhood Police Sergeant had also been invited along. Initially there was some anger as it appeared that the police were not doing anything about it. In fact, James was able to explain just how much he had been doing. He had identified, by name, 35 young people who had been hanging around, of whom 28 lived in the surrounding streets. He will be delivering a letter by hand to each of their parents, telling them about the things that have been going on, and warning them about the risks to their sons and daughters.

He also asked the people living nearby to keep anti-social behaviour diaries which could be used to capture the hard evidence that he needs in order to pin down the ringleaders.

James has been particularly successful in dealing with anti-social behaviour in the area, ever since the Safer Neighbourhoods team was set up in June last year. There had been a lot of issues in Hook Parade, but these have now almost completely vanished. One of the tactics that he used there was to video the young people, then show it to their parents.

The first ASBO in Kingston was issued by James to a well-known young man in Hook a couple of years ago, and he has not been in trouble since. We were reassured that the troublemakers in Hook Parade were totally different individuals from the ones now using the Bullwhips.

All the people living near the Bullwhips are being invited to a meeting with the police, council officers and local councillors on 1st December at 7.30pm in St Paul's School. This will be a chance to look at a number of things that can be done, including improvements to the park, perhaps along the lines of some of the suggestions made yesterday evening.

If you would like to comment on this posting please email me and I will include your comments in the next posting.

That's funny. My Blackberry has been unable to pick up my emails since.... well, to be precise, since I walked into the Home Office on Wednesday evening.

e-Government is dead; long live Transformational Government....

Yesterday the government published its strategy for government 'enabled by technology'. I was invited to the launch at the Home Office, as one of the few representatives of local government. John Hutton, Minister at the Cabinet Office, was supposed to be addressing us - but the events of the day had transformed him already.

Now although I have been eager to criticise the Labour Government for many of its actions, I am always happy to applaud sensible things. For example, I find it very difficult to believe that the dreadful Schools White Paper, which casts schools adrift from local accountability, emanates from the same team that produced Every Child Matters, which in my opinion is one of the most humane documents about children to come out of central government since the 1944 Education Act.

The Transformational Government strategy fits into the 'sensible and rational' category (with one exception that I will come to later). In the long run, it is going to have a far more significant impact on people's lives than the downfall of David Blunkett.

The problem in the past with e-Government has been the 'e'. It has meant that significant changes in the way public services are delivered have been perceived as purely technical matters. It has meant that people have focused on the means rather than the ends.

In fact, e-government has been about bringing good business practices into public services. And it has been most noticable in local government. Citizens can now phone their council and expect to be answered immediately; they can carry out a large number of transactions online (from paying bills to booking evening classes) at times that suit them; they can track the decisions made by their councillors; they can communicate by email, text or phone. It has taken enormous shifts in culture, as well as investment in infrastructure, in local government to fulfil these perfectly normal expectations.

Transformational Government shifts the thinking from 'e' to citizen-focused services, enabled by technology. This may seem to be simply semantic, but as all politicians know, the language you use influences how people react and engage with a project.

Some of the strategy is about professionalism in developing IT systems, acknowledging implicitly the shameful failures of several centralised and expensive government projects.

It also supports a shared services approach between all public services - the kind of thing that we have been developing with our partners in Kingston to safeguard children.

The one quibble I have is with its explicit reference to biometric identity cards. Whilst public services do need ways of identifying people accurately, this can be achieved without going as far as the bureaucratic ID card, with all its potential for undermining civil rights. The Liberal Democrats have developed a site which explains their objections to the Government's proposals for ID cards with a petition to sign.

In fact, the paragraph in the strategy that refers to ID cards would have been perfectly coherent if it had just mentioned the need to have reliable means of identifying citizens when they use public services. Instead the Government has risked alienating many who would otherwise have given the strategy their wholehearted support.

If you would like to comment on this posting please email me and I will include your comments in the next posting.

Comment received from Caroline Cheales, 9/11/05:

There is perhaps another largish quibble. 40.2 includes a presumption for funding bodies that 'public service organisations only deliver good value for money when they standardise and deliver services with others'. Whilst this might be true most of the time, there will be a number of instances where freedom to act and deliver locally will also represent good value for money.

Great summary - and we too have an issue with biometric ID cards as authenticators for public services.

Mary says:

You're quite right, of course. Partnerships and joint working can bring real rewards but government should not be prescriptive about this. It could stifle innovation, as well as discouraging local solutions designed to meet very specific or unusual needs.

Comments have been disabled because of the massive spam attack recently. This will be sorted out when the ReadMyDay project moves to a new platform very soon.

In the meantime, if you'd like to make a comment please email me and I'll include them in a posting.

The Schools White Paper is a mess. It claims to give power to parents, but as Alice Miles wrote in The Times it is not at all clear how this can happen. She used the problem in North Kingston to illustrate her point, and I think it's worth quoting most of her story:

One MP, Susan Kramer, said at Prime Minister’s Questions this week that her constituents, who have been fighting for a new school in Kingston upon Thames, “have been calling me because they are completely confused. Can they have their school?” She got only waffle for an answer, so I tried to find out.

North Kingston is served by a girls’ grammar school, Tiffin, which selects by ability, giving no preference to local children. So the 150 kids who each year leave two primary schools, Fern Hill and Latchmere, and fail to get in to Tiffin — and few do get in — have no local school to attend. They end up in secondaries all over Kingston.

Two years ago parents fighting for a new local non- selective school got together with the LEA to try to make a case for it. The LEA concluded, however, that because there were surplus places elsewhere in the borough, the Treasury would not allow it. OK, so, first: has the surplus places rule been abolished? The Prime Minister this week said that it had and the Department of Education (DfES) confirmed that. But, in the White Paper itself, it says only that when a new school is created “the result may be that there are more surplus places”. Who is going to pay for these?

The DfES has set up a £180 million “Parents’ Pot” to help to establish new schools where local authorities cannot afford to pay for them. The cost of a new secondary is £20-£25 million, so that will pay for at most nine new schools. It is not clear what happens after the first year, or who then funds the running of the schools, and the Treasury was giving no commitments at all this week.

Assuming you want to go ahead anyway, how do you, a Kingston parent, set about it? Well, you get a proposal together for a new Trust school, backed by like-minded parents, and an educational foundation or voluntary organisation.

Then you go to your LEA, which must provide “consultancy support” to help you to develop a concrete proposal. If the LEA then rejects the proposal, parents can appeal to the Adjudicator, and if the Adjudicator rejects it they can appeal to the new Schools Commissioner, who will make a recommendation to the Secretary of State. If she OKs it, the LEA has to find some land . . . not exactly straightforward in an area such as Kingston.

Parents in North Kingston were not celebrating the White Paper this week but watching sceptically to see whether a new school might actually be feasible this time. Their other MP, Ed Davey, who speaks on education for the Liberal Democrats, thinks it will take an absolute minimum of two years to get a new school up and running (once the Commons has passed the legislation next year), and that is if the LEA agrees it first time. So it is far too late to wait until your child is about to leave primary school to act.