BB100

Lydia Pink in Blackheath was voted Young Dentist of the year and works with street children in Peru in her spare time. She's great.

Not quite as bad as the kids who threw egg and flour on the doorstep and my 85 year old gran slipped and fell.

prickle Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- Also at the auditions, each child is > asked where they will be putting Kingsdale in > their list. This is definitely not kosher. My child wasn't asked this and was offered a scholarship.

cn150 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Thanks for the comments everybody - my initial > post has sparked a lot of interesting, if not > always objective debate. We will just have to keep > our eyes on things and see how the school > develops. > > Does anyone know where its pupils are typicaly > coming from - is is just local recruitment, i.e. > SE15 / SE22 - or are some coming from further > afield? One Harris boy told me he came from Orpington! I think the first years intake had a very wide catchment as it was an unknown school with no history. All the children I know that go there are from SE4 or SE23.

There has been lots of murmurings about Kingsdale in the past few years recruiting the middle classes but if you listen very carefully to the Head's speech he wants children who want to learn and parents who are interested in their child's education rather than children who come from a middle class family. Educational research suggests it is those children and parents that improve a school, not families' socio-economic status. Isn't it middle-class snobbery to assume only the middle classes care about their kids education, give them instrument lessons and take them to football on sat mornings? Kingsdale offer their scholarships to a range of abilities and potential, not just the best.

You shouldn't worry too much Emma unless you are very very thirsty then you should ring and tell the clinic. I was walking around with a 5 litre bottle of water and drinking 7 cartons of juice a day whilst waiting for my appointment at Kings and didn't know my blood glucose levels were sky high (and was making it worse with the fruit juice). Even so, my baby was fine so unless you feel unwell or are having urine infections a little wait shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks texasatthemoment for posting one or two of my comments above but be careful what you read into this. The poster who trys to defend Kingsdale has only had her child there for a few weeks and as her first child is a girl I wonder if she has actually even visited Harris Boys anyway. I know parents who have taken their kids out of Kingsdale as well and others who agree it can be disorganised at times. I suppose it depends on who you talk to as I do have a child at Kingsdale as well. Harris Boys is being run like an independent public boys school and does operate a very strict discipline regime. But parents who have boys there tell me it is firm but fair and they think the school is fantastic. One parent said to me that she feels she has got a private school for free. I think you just have to be sure that your child can cope with having to be well-behaved all the time.

eliza Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > year. I also have a son and would not be happy to > send him to Harris. It has a boot camp aspect that > I find really unattractive. An earlier post > suggested that Kingsdale could be a bit > disorganised and the teaching at Harris was > possibly better. Are you talking about Harris Boys Eliza because yes I agree it could be called a boot camp? However, Harris Crystal Palace is a very different school with a much more relaxed and informal atmosphere. Unless you have had children at both I don't see how you can compare. I am glad, however, you are delighted with your daughters first few weeks at Kingsdale, it is a very good school.

loulou9999 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > No OFSTED yet, no results to latch onto. Bit of a > wild card, but we will at least be going back to > the open day on saturday to have another look. > Parents I met there were mainly of the same > opinion but felt it was worth having a second > look. Someone who went to the Head's talk told me 55% of the kids have gone up by 3 levels, so hardly a wild card if true.

I have a few friends with children at Harris boys. The quality of education seems to be on a par with Crystal palace, if not even better as they have more to prove. However you may want to check whether the harsh discipline regime will suit your child as they are very strict.

As I've said on this subject before, it would be over the headteacher's dead body if his kids use the park. They are not allowed to use it even to walk home and get detention if their caught. They use the South bank for field sports, the pulse for swimming as part of the compulsary curriculum and Crystal Palace athletic stadium for competitions. They spend double the amount of time on sports in the compulsary school day than any other state school in the area - so BPaul85 they won't be getting fat as they are not allowed in any of the shops with their school uniform on either.

Hubby told me a couple of years ago we were not having anymore children because we can't afford it. Whilst it will be good to see the same rule applied to those on benefits, I can't help but think it only punishes the children with parents that choose to have more anyway (and what about those mothers who are raped or widowed?). However I know at least three women at my school whose children have just reached their teens so have recently had babies to keep their benefits. And I'm all for the capping of housing benefit. You can get a very decent 3-4 bed semi-detached house in SE London for ?1200 per month (capped at ?1400). I should know because whilst I pay my heavy mortgage and council tax, my benefit claiming neighbour lives for free in an identicle property next door.

I have a child at Kingsdale and a child at Harris Crystal Palace. As you would expect for state schools the behaviour of the children is more or less the same at both, although the behaviour of teaching staff is not. I found Harris staff more professional, highly organised and the quality and pace of teaching is far superior, whereas the pastoral care at Kingsdale is more than outstanding. It is easy to get a bit carried away with the hype of kingsdale but it is just an ordinary state school who are trying their very best to change things, albeit occasionally in a disorganised kind of way. I chose different schools to match my children's personalities - one sensitive and needs lots of nurturing, the other hardworking and serious - I'm sure you can work out which child goes to which. And by the way don't be put off and assume because it's a lottery and oversubscribed you won't get into either - someone has to and you have just as much chance as anyone else. I've found talking to other parents that with the pan-London scheme most get into where they want...eventually. The beauty of the pan-london scheme is you can put the one you want at the top, not the one you think you're likely to get.

I used to cook frozen mixed vegetables before the meal as a starter and call them sweets.

There is an early years theory called 'schemas' which would suggest your child has a 'trajectory schema' because he likes to throw and is interested in cause and effect and is learning and experimenting with movement and his own power. Some early years settings use schemas to develop learning and change behaviours by introducing similar but safer activites. In plain English, schema would recommend you could channel your child's interest positively by giving him other activities that you do approve of where he can practise throwing. This could be throwing pooh sticks in a river, throwing balls/beanbags into a bucket or in the garden, bowling skittles, etc,. If you give him enough positive throwing experiences he can begin to learn when it is not appropriate by your tone of voice and behaviour and will not need to look for, often inappropriate, things to throw. The posts above are all full of helpful suggestions and suggest that some of your toddlers have found that throwing gets them attention. Your child's lack of verbal communication is fustrating for him and throwing has become a way of communicating that he has found you respond to. Children communicate in many ways not just speech - Loris Maggazzi said children have a 100 languages but we try to restrict them to just one - speech. Learning some makaton or using simple body language signs or photographs of things your child likes/wants/needs can help support communication whilst he is still learning speech. Doing lots of close observation to see what triggers the negative throwing and then trying to intercept it before it happens is hard work but worth it. Try to embrace the throwing as a learning tool and hide all the heavy objects for a while.

No you're right Bellenden Belle, but it's an interesting way of looking at it if child benefit can make a pivotal difference - new mother says it makes a difference to her. For me I'm on a win-win-win - I'm under the threshold and married so I don't have any incentive to argue against this, but can see a wider picture.

I've used holidaylettings.co.uk three times now for private villas and have always found the accommodation excellent.

I think new mother has a valid point if you reverse her reasoning. By paying for her child's education she relieves the state from the financial burden of schooling her child. If giving new mother child benefit enables her to do that and she is saving the tax payer thousands of pounds and freeing up a state school place then taking child benefit away is short-sighted foolishness. Investing can reap greater gains than penny pinching.

How are they going to find out who these children live with anyway? What about children who live part time with one parent and then the rest of the time with the other? What about those parents who live together and are not married so the tax man doesn't know about him? What if a woman lives with her high earning brother or father, he could be mistaken as the child's father and should a parent get child benefit if they live rent free with their high-earning parents?

And how much will it cost exactly?

But, dear James, it will only save one billion - a tiny drop in the ocean compared to the pain you admit it will inflict. And that has to be set against the extra reform, admin and compliance costs. Few are argueing it shouldn't be done - it's how.

peckhamboy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The problem is that doing a full means-testing (by > HMRC rather than the government) is costly and > time-consuming, and would probably negate all the > cost savings of reducing CB. No it wouldn't - we already have a tax credit system that considers both incomes so it could be tacked onto that without too much cost and would be fairer. It shows this has not been thought through properly. And what about those who don't earn because they live on huge capital? - could they continue to get it? And what about those self-employed who run many living expenses through their accounts so their income is relatively more? Another issue is the loss of comprehensive data of all the children in this country used for stratgic planning and child protection, as the coalition scrapped the contactpoint database in August. And it will be more difficult to prove main parental/carer responsibility....there are some significant knock-on effects. One good thing could be the system discovers there are many children who now live abroad and should not be claimed for. It's a bit like the idea of guaranteeing places to children on free school meals - if parents will move house to get into a school, what stops them giving up their job or splitting from their working partner and becoming a lone parent for six months? Are politicians thick or just stupid?

njc97 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > I missed the programme but presumably "Heston" was > Toby Young. I'm not sure you can take his views as > representative of how free schools will work in > general. No but it encapsulates how parents are not necessarily the best people to lead education reform if they adopt the 'we know what's best' approach. It's 100 years back to 'force feeding' (he used that term not me).

UnderhillOliver Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hi all > ? doors. Fit decent locks, worth paying the money. > If your door has a bolt or chain then use it! > Also, if your > door has a glass panel(s) then how easy would it > be to remove the glass and reach around to the > lock? It's a common way of gaining entry. This made me chuckle as I have in the past ten years gone out five times and left the front door wide open. (Forgot when putting the kids in the car). Three times the postman, leafleters and free paper men have thrown their deliveries onto the door mat obviously assuming someone was home. I don't recommend it though.

The thing that screamed at me was how the guy leading a free school project just didn't listen to the boy who showed him around a comprehensive school. All we need is more dictators creating oppressed truanting children in our education system. Free schools should live upto their name by producing free thinkers.