everyman

James, Please you misunderstand me. I said that it is too important to be a political football. What I mean by that here in Peckham Rye ward all I have seen from local politicians are two leaflets. LAbour didn;t even mention the primary school places issue and Lib Dems made a strange comment about the problems being down to "Boris Johnson's office". Don;t get me wrong, these leaflets are obviously nothing more than party political soundbites, but my problem is where is the serious campaigning from Labour, Lib Dems, Tories, Greens etc on this issue to lobby for my 4 year old son to be able to go to a school which will give him the necessary start to life. Politics is vitally important. Do not misunderstand me. But do you really think that flawed leaflets=politics? I have to say that I think you and Fiona Colley are fantastic - you are the only two councillors who seem to be interested in this issue. I note from Southwark webssite that you James are Lib Dem and Fiona is Labour, so it's good to see two of the four main parties involved. But where are your lib dem colleagues on this (Richard Thomas and Jonathan Mitchell) and where are the Peckham Rye labour councillors (Robert Smeath, Evrim Laws or Aubyn Graham). To all of you we would love to see some proper cross party campaigning to put worried parents' minds at rest and to demosntrate that politics in this area is working.

So Councillor Smeath (Peckham Rye), you seem to be happy to make political capital out of this situation - but where is there any evidence of campaigning by Labour? The last leaflet through our door from Labour made no mention of the primary school issue. Granted, the Lib Dems decided make it a political football by blaming "Boris Johnson's office" - whatever that may be. Politicians need to understand, our children's education is far, far too important to be reduced to a mere political football.

Caroline Pigeon was councillor in charge of education until recently when she was elected as a GLA member. She was presumably therefore responsible, or at least happy with, the way that forecasts were done - ie using GLA data. Surely she is the ideal person to have a comment on the GLA data fiasco. James I applaud your appearance on this forum - it is excellent. What is a pity is that you seem to be a lone voice - what have the other 2 ED councillors and the Peckham Rye Councillors to say on the matter?

Where is Caroline Pigeon on this? Correct me if I am wrong but is she not a GLA member. Also was she not Lib Dem councillor i/c education before she was elected to the GLA last year Seem to this humble voter that she should be making some sort of statement.......... Do you have some sort of influence over this?

Thanks Fuschia - this is very interesting. The Department clearly states therefore that authorities themselves need to take account of local factors that will influence future pupil numbers such as birth rate, new housing and population migration. It also is also clear that the Department puts the responsibility on the accuracy of results on the local autorities. So basically for the Council to blaming anyone else for this (I quote the Lib Dem leaflet here: "Boris Johnson's Office got their school places projections wrong earlier this year.") But it isn;t the GLA who is is responsible for providing school places it is Southwark, and if the council did not do enough work to confirm the reliability of the data they are the ones at fault

Laurie - you say in your post: "According to the information provided to the council by the GLA - there shouldn't have been a need for a new school. So how could the Council previously have justified spending money on something which wasn't thought to be needed? I'm not trying to make excuses - I'm trying to represent local people here, not the council - but what could they have done differently?" You are either being naive or you are asking us to be naive - but are you really saying the system of forecasted numbers for children is only done on a year by year basis and then not reviewed thoroughly? Are you really saying that forecasts are not then tested against reality each year and any anomaly investigated to identify trends which might not have been realised and can be analysed to prevent problems in the future? Are you really sayng that the the Council does no triangulation of GLA forecasts against other data? If so this is truly scary. Either the date was giving the council this information ages ago and you lot (assuming you are a councillor) did nothing about it, or they didn;t have the information and your forecasting systems are flawed. If there really was a surprise that noone could have seen coming then how about you publish the data that you were provided with over the last five years and show the actual figures for those years and demonstrate what a surprise it was

Poor you. It sounds awful and frightening. I have found situations like that far worse since having kids. As you say - thank goodness for the people in the white van, demonstrating that you were right to be upset and also that most people are basically decent

We have just had two political leaflets through the door - one from the Lib Dems and one from Labour. Lib Dems' leaflet was very self-righteous with some rather convenient pre election pledges: 1) Class sizes won;t get bigger. 2) New resources will follow any new school places 3) They will work with local schools to ensure there are always enough places for local kids. My question is this - why haven;t they been doing the above for the last eight years? Fat lot of good number 3 is for those of us who have kids going to primary school in the next couple of years, when there won't be enough places. And haven;t they been in power for the last 8 years? At the moment there aren;t enough places and it has happened on their watch. Labour - didn't even manage to mention the primary sschool issue at all. NOT AT ALL. So presumably this isn't important for them. There has been absolutely no sign of any campaigning for us parents by the local politicans - with the exception of Fiona Colley who has organised the upcoming council meeting. I don;t want this to be a party political issue. I just wonder what the local politicians think are issues if primary education isn't worth fighting for....

Thanks Fiona - glad to see the political processes kicking. Will definitely be there. I know it's a council committee - but hopefully politics will be kept to a minimum in the attempt to get the best for our children.

Results are May 10 - 5pm online. Local elections are on Thursday May 6. Coincidence? I don;t think so. Maybe councillors could campaign for the results to be released BEFORE the election.......

It is revealing how little we are hearing from our local councillors I think. I have no idea what campaigning is going on our behalf. An election coming up and there will be loads of leaflets and delivering - but where is the action? I have heard nothing from the Peckham Rye councillors - and only Fiona Colley has looked like DOING something. But even then she talks about committees and scrutiny etc. We need to putting pressure on the highly paid council executives who had brought us to this position

It is a great post by Fiona Colley because at last a politician is talking about action they will take - rather than just talking about how it is nobody's fault etc, etc. It would be great to see all the local councillors acting in concert in a non political way to get action on this issue. It would also be nice to know where Peckham Rye's councillors have gone - a major local issue and not a peep from them!!

Laurie, Please can you expalin exactly what campaigning is being done for all of us worried parents? I see that you are looking into the issue - but what action is being taken? What is Southwark Council (be it politicians or officers) doing to actually avoid what is a scandalous lack of provision of primary places. For example is there a senior executive who can explain how the long term strategy failed so abjectly and what on earth Southwark is going to do about it. If I hear one more time that it is due to the recession I will scream - for goodness sake the provate schools are full to busting...........

I will second that: Forest hill group practice is excellent.

what a shame it between 12-4 on a Friday...