Zaardvark

Two things would really help schools in this area and in general: (a) Having an enforced school entry lottery for ANY school within reasonable distance. (b) Removing private schools' charitable status, forcing costs up and the most 'vocal' parents back into the state sector. Zaardvark

Noted this, sadly, the other week in the recent ofsted reports for this area (have a 3 year old): "Key for inspection grades Grade 1 Outstanding Grade 2 Good Grade 3 Satisfactory Grade 4 Inadequate Overall effectiveness of the school Grade: 4 In accordance with section 13 (3) of the Education Act 2005, HMCI is of the opinion that the school requires Special Measures, because it is failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education and the persons responsible for leading, managing or governing the school are not demonstrating the capacity to secure the necessary improvement. Pupils do not make sufficient progress in their lessons and their personal development is inadequate. This is largely because much of the teaching in Years 1 to 6 is inadequate and the leadership's monitoring is not strong enough to ensure that teachers fully implement school policies correctly and consistently. Teaching is too inconsistent to arrest a decline in pupils' progress." Zaardvark

Must say that I think they would probably do better over the next few years by making their agencies into actual coffee shops - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4826444.stm if you didn't already know how dodgy they are. Best Zarrdvark

Hi, Just to add to this: saw a 2 bed flat here the other day and I was shocked by the poor quality of the design, particularly, and the build. It has a stupid balcony in one bedroom looking down into the living room, thereby rendering that bedroom more or less useless unelss people have exactly the same sleep patterns as their flatmates. It has poor natural light in the kitchen with a wierd wire mesh, or should that be 'mess', storage solution in the kitchen area in front of the windows, which would block all light when full. It is small and the available space only allows tiny, quarter sized fridges and freezers, as the sensible space for this is occupied by an entirely unecessary extra downstairs toilet. Many of the views are of the sainsbury's carpark and the activity playground next door. These flats are on at 1300 per month to rent or 350k to buy. I would hesitate to pay half that for these. Anyway, sorry for the rant but that building is such a waste of space, time and money that it really riled me. Cheers Zaardvark