tomskip

I agree that the solo of Once In Royal David's City on R4 is a very significant moment, but for me Christmas starts mid-December when we put our tree up (we do have fairly young children). By then we have sent most of the Christmas cards - if not bought all the presents or the food shop and so we are starting to feel a wee bit Christmassy. It will be 12th/13th December for us this year.

Do you have a place to move to yet elln? I only ask because I am sure there are no addresses in East Dulwich which would qualify for a catchment place at all of those schools.

Ah. Habs was the one we just didn't bother with second time around.

It's infuriating all this isn't it? Most of us just want our children to go to a reasonably local school with reasonable results given their mixed intake (and most of SE London will have a mixed intake with odd unusual pockets like Dulwich Village to liven things up a bit). But NO! it seems to be impossible. And you really do have to be a clued-up, sharp-elbowed and pretty determined parent to ensure your child gets the best offer possible. Of course there are thousands of children in Southwark and Lewisham who don't have such an adult on their side.

The banding tests are a pita, and when it came to applying for our second child we certainly didn't bother with sending him for the tests at those schools where we had no chance of getting a place (utter waste of time). However, while we don't have a Schools Admissions Forum, I can't see what you hope to achieve, op, by boycotting them? In Lewisham, certainly, they are used to ensure that a school takes an even mix of abilities. Harris and Kingsdale are a law unto themselves (another reason why an Admissions Forum would be welcome) as ITATM says.

Thanks. You can't do it if you are driving down Denmark Hill towards Camberwell Green? This is obviously where I went horribly wrong.

What is the trick to finding one's way to the car park behind Morrisons in Camberwell (I think the shopping centre is called Butterfly Walk). Thanks.

Without being intrusive, it would be nice to know how the critically injured pupil is doing. I'm sure the school is learning every lesson possible.

Honestly, don't watch ITV!

ITV always take a negative stance, but then you can't really put a positive spin on this incident.

Oh merci Monkey! I will send you a pm.

Hello, I just wondered if there are any native or fluent French speakers in the Family Room who would be willing to record themselves reading out my daughter's French homework so that she can practice her accent and pronounciation? It is only a 3-4 minute piece, which she has already written, but it is vital for her French gcse oral exam. We would be so grateful! Please pm if you can help. I would need about 5 minutes of your time some time on Friday, or Saturday morning. Thank you.

Thanks for that summary first mate. Helpful for those of us who haven't been following the whole saga. I too would have preferred a Waitrose to M&S, but even better if it could have stayed as was with affordable housing above.

Decathlon usually have flip flops year round.

Its a terrible situation to be in, and one shared by so many single parents. As a family unit, your housing costs must now be very much higher (?) but even so a contribution of ?400 for two children seems very low from someone earning a salary like that.

So, one half of a couple leaves the other, leaves the two young children behind, and then never has to worry again about the cost of their childcare? How can anyone even think that is logical or acceptable? Presumably HelloSailor has "work needs" because she needs to provide for the children apart from anything else. The alternative is to give up work and become totally dependent on benefits.

Perhaps not many children from East Dulwich go to Harris Crystal Palace? I've lived here for a long time and have yet to meet one that does. Isn't it like a super-selective grammar for those outside their catchment? It is yet another school with yet another set of admissions rules in a supposedly comprehensive area! When you try to explain it to your 10 year old you find we have an inconsistent system that argues on the one hand it is absolutely imperative for secondary aged children and all of their siblings go to their closest school (see Charter ED's proposed admissions priorities). But if you don't happen to live quite close enough or have an older sibling with a place, then parents should instead be adventurous and grateful and send their child to a school, even a faith school in a faith they do not share, quite a distance away where he or she will know not one soul on the first day of term. And all that time the child will be crossing paths on their school journey with children who live much further afield travelling in to the school which, actually, they would have liked to attend. When you say "I have no idea what people think should be done" LondonMix, I could say - specifically in East Dulwich - that 1. Harris Boys and Girls could become co-ed and with no selective element as most parents seems to prefer co-ed 2. Kingsdale could become a "local" not pan-London secondary, without a selective element, and class sizes of 30 and, more generally 3. the sibling priority dropped at secondary age T'aint never going to happen though is it, while there is no equivalent of the old Local Authority input.

I don't know, but wherever you choose can you post your destination here so that the rest of us can avoid it ;)

I don't believe for one minute that any child in East Dulwich has a chance of getting in to six reasonably local secondary schools (if they are not going for private or grammar). I'm really curious to know if anyone in the whole country does, actually. It seems to me that if you are made to put down six preferences then that helps when the Government wants to provide statistics showing that nearly 100% of parents get one of their preferred schools. When in reality we all only have two, at best three, schools that our children could get in to or indeed want to get in to. When I was applying for my first child I actually put this question to Renata and she suggested Deptford Green or, did I have a religion and could I put down a faith school? I put down the three schools we had a chance of getting in to (this included Kingsdale - so a very remote chance) and just filled up the bottom three places on this list with schools vaguely in the vicinity. With my second child I did not make the mistake of wasting his time taking him to banding tests at, for example, Habs. As I understand it, Dunraven is Streatham's equivalent of the Charter School and has a minute catchment area, so no, we are nowhere near close enough.

I saw it today. What has happened about that planning application to build in the back garden? (I thought they should have converted it to one 3 or 4 bed house above, with a self contained lower ground floor flat, with half the garden each by the way).

If she has been with you for years and standards have only just dipped then surely you need to be speaking to her and asking her if everything is ok with her? Trying to find out why things have changed, not just assuming that she is ripping you off or needs to be got rid of.

Bus from Lordship Lane to Forest Hill station then a 12-15 minute walk. It takes about 35 minutes door to door.

All the reports I've had about the school are pretty positive. I know quite a few people with children currently there and some who have been all the way through and on to 6th form. I quizzed them fairly closely about their experiences. No school is perfect and so you will never get a consensus, obviously, but a good inclusive properly comprehensive education is what I always wanted for my children. It was our first choice for our son - I was so impressed at the open day that I came away truly excited about the prospect of him starting secondary! But then we failed to get a place (on distance), which was a terrible blow. It has become another oversubscribed school. Our son went on the waiting list and got a place on the first day of term. It has only been a few weeks but he goes off happily, comes home full of enthusiasm for his lessons (particularly maths and art) and is coping with the amount of homework they give him.

Is Barry Road exempt from the 20 mph limit?

No, I understand that the first gcse result of any individual student is now the one that "counts" in the stats. But I can't compute how that makes the results of an individual school drop by, say, 10% from September 2014 to January 2015. Are we saying that (for example and I am just picking one reasonably local school randomly here) in September 2014 Habs said 70% of their pupils got 5 gcses A-C including English and Maths. But in January 2015 those results had been adjusted to 64% because 6% of the previous result was made up of gcses taken for a second time? But then if they were taken in year 11 then surely they SHOULD count as the school's Year 11 gcse results? I suppose it's just me, but I really don't find this really simple.