The report today from the think tank Reform, claiming that maths exams are easier now than years ago, has drawn a predictable response from the government, who once again bury their heads in the sand in the face of overwhelming evidence that they’re wrong.

The report analysed exams for 16 year olds from 1951 and found that standards have fallen markedly. I am often sceptical of think tank reports, but I remember thinking the same thing myself at the time I took my own maths GCSE in 1996, and we have been frequently told it since. Put simply, I got a good pass in my GCSE, but would have failed an O-Level if I’d been born twenty years earlier.

Take a look at this comparison page to see for yourself the difference in standards. I reckon I could give the later papers a good go even now, but I don’t even understand the question from 1951.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/03_06_08_mathematics.pdf

The report concludes that the syllabus has got broader and shallower. As someone who lives with a teacher, I know that the entire curriculum is now so broad and shallow that often we barely scratch the surface. Our children are becoming the jack of all trades and the masters of none, which is a failure to get the basics of the education system right, and risks seriously damaging the economy in future, when graduates in maths and sciences from emerging competitor nations are better skilled than the young people graduating here.

Of course give children the introduction to a broad range of subjects, but we must teach key skills in depth and make exams a rigorous test so that entry to higher and tertiary education is made in subjects in which young people really do excel. We produce many times fewer science and maths graduates than our economic competitors, unsurprising given the lack of focused challenge in mathematics exams that this report highlights. Easier exams don’t stretch the gifted into developing an interest beyond that which is necessary to tick a box and pass a GCSE. The advanced study of maths and science should be about discovery and excitement and the wonder of the natural world and what makes and changes it. It’s why I was never good at it, because I had the skill to write about it rather than the patience and logical brain to learn it.

And yet the government remain in denial about this despite an overwhelming weight of evidence, insisting that the standards of exams are closely monitored. Well, they aren’t monitored closely enough, are they? Lib Dem Shadow Children, Schools and Families Secretary David Laws has called for a fully independent regulator to restore confidence in the system. Given that it is not serving its purpose, and giving young people increasingly valueless qualifications in which universities and employers have little faith, this is one approach that will work to make maths teaching as effective as possible.

I don’t begrudge a single young person a GCSE in anything. I congratulate them all on their achievements, and if they do what’s asked of them then they deserve all the credit we can give them. But if what they’re asked to do does little but give the government a tool to massage attainment figures, then both they and us lose out in the long run. Making exams harder doesn’t mean consigning children to failure. It means giving them real choices between subjects that they’re good at, and subjects that they’re not. It means preparing them to use what they learn in the workplace, rather than using it to pass an exam and then forget. And most of all, it means instilling in young people a love of a subject, a passion for learning it, and a will to continue developing and discovering that will last way beyond the end of an exam.

Rick

After a year of campaigning for reductions on bus travel rates for children in Bury, the Borough’s young people will be able to save £1 a week on the cost of school travel from next month.

Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority (GMPTA) is introducing a new £6 weekly ticket for three of the school bus services it provides in the borough. It currently costs 70p for a single child ticket. The Bury members of GMPTA are my fellow Lib Dem Councillor Andrew Garner, and me.

The School Saver ticket will be valid on the 799 service to Derby High and the 797 and 798 to St Monica’s RC High in Prestwich .

The new School Saver ticket could save families in the borough nearly £40 a year on school travel costs. I’m pleased we’ve been able to provide the ticket on three of the school bus services we provide in Bury. Unfortunately, we’re not able to extend the offer to commercial services, and of course we continue to campaign for big reductions and more fairness in children’s school bus travel..

The new School Saver ticket will be on sale from Monday 31 March in newsagents, supermarkets and garages across Bury with the Pay Point sign, as well as from the GMPTE Travelshop in Bury Interchange.

Pupils will be able to buy the School Saver ticket up to three days in advance of its start date and will need a GMPTE Under 16 membership card. The card is free and application forms can be picked up from Travelshops or downloaded from www.gmpte.com/under16

Rick

Tuesday night was the Planning Committee’s final decision on the Children’s Centre for our ward at Butterstile School, and I welcome the Planning Committee’s decision to approve planning permission for the Centre. It is great news for the ward and will allow our children and their families to benefit from this new facility.

However, the conduct of the Council in this matter has been less than the standard I expect, and unfortunately some residents, particularly on School Grove, rightly feel let down.

Because of delays caused by errors in the design and consultation stage, overseen by the Labour-controlled Council pre-May and not speedily rectified by the Tory-controlled Council post-May, residents weren’t properly consulted, and the design had to be radically changed. Seemingly nobody at the Council new that building on a hill might cost a bit more money, or that people near to the development might want their say.

Now time is of the essence if the project is to be completed, because by the time the Council got round to designing something workable and consulting properly on it, months had gone on. As a result, considerations such as parking and traffic access on School Grove haven’t been given the consideration they warrant.

I would like to assure residents that I will continue to press for improvements to traffic and parking here, as I did at Planning Committee some weeks ago when this decision was discussed. Interestingly, Labour Councillors were nowhere to be seen supporting residents.

I stood up for residents then and secured a site visit by Planning not because I was opposed to the Children’s Centre (which I am not), or opposed to it being sited at Butterstile (which I am not either, if it’s done right), but because the residents of this ward affected by a development deserve to have their case justly heard. And now I think they have been. The Committee didn’t side with them, but that’s their decision and as long as it was failry made, I’m OK with it. We need to move on now and try to get parking and traffic controls in different ways - working with the school, the users of the new Centre, and the Council itself.

But worryingly, despite the progress with Planning, the much-needed outreach centre at Rainsough is still under threat. Despite me initiating discussions with Labour-run Salford Council and also securing £20,000 from Bury MBC for this project, Salford have so far failed to commit the rest of the money needed to complete this project in Rainsough. They have gone to the press with their colleagues in Bury and said how wonderful it would be, but they seem reluctant to back up their headline-grabs with any kind of financial contribution. If this outreach centre fails to happen it will be a travesty for local people, and I urge as many residents as possible to make their feelings known towards Salford Labour who appear to have ignored my constructive work in favour of doing nothing for Rainsough again. Even if the money comes, it will only be as a result of our continuing prodding, and a small financial gesture coming at the end of many years of neglect.

I hope it comes, and I hope we can all share in the happy opening of an Outreach Centre. It’s up to Salford Labour to join us now and share our work with Rainsough. Will they?

Rick

Today the Bury Council Planning Control Committee are visiting School Grove to see for themselves the traffic and congestion issues brought to their attention by residents opposed to the Butterstile Children’s Centre.

Whilst I am firmly of the view that our ward needs a Children’s Centre, I also know how important it is for the Council to listen to the views of residents, and for all of us to have confidence that due process is followed. At least now, if it goes against them, they can’t say that their views weren’t heard at all.

The Committee will come to their fair and impartial view as to whether the residents’ concerns are enough to warrant restrictions or amendments to the planning application. And I will let you know what their view is.

Rick 

Greater Manchester’s Yellow School Bus services are reducing congestion, improving pupil behaviour and boosting school attendance, according to the latest report heard by transport bosses.
Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority (GMPTA), on which I sit and represent Bury MBC, now funds the services to 22 schools, providing safe and reliable journeys for more than 2000 pupils.
Councillors heard that the Yellow School Buses have made a major impact on the school run, taking more than 265,000 car-miles off the road this school year.

And antisocial behaviour on school buses has reduced by 75% at schools that have the yellow buses. Schools have also praised the services for improving attendance records.
One Yellow School Bus currently runs to Bury Church school and the scheme has proved a hit with pupils and parents.
My Lib Dem colleague Cllr Andrew Garner is the Bury spokesperson for GMPTA. He  said: “Yellow School Buses are a safe and reliable way of getting pupils to and from school. We already know from anecdotal evidence that they are popular, but this report really highlights the benefits of the service.
The services are really helping to tackle local congestion caused by the school run, as well as offering a safe travelling environment for pupils. I’m sure other road users appreciate the services too as they take so many cars off the road each morning and afternoon. We have bid for government funding to buy more Yellow School Buses and reports like this really illustrate what a strong case there is for expanding the service.”
Pupils using Yellow School Bus services have to sign up to a code of conduct, use the same seatbelt-equipped seats every day and have regular drivers to help build a good working relationship.
All Yellow School Bus drivers have undergone an extensive training programme run by GMPTE, which includes training in customer care, first aid, disability awareness, health and safety issues and conflict avoidance.Two more vehicles are due to be introduced at schools in Wigan early in the new year, taking the number of Yellow School Buses in Greater Manchester to 36, running to 22 schools. Yellow buses are something I and the Bury Lib Dems give our full support to, and have publicly backed in Council. We will continue to press for more of these buses, funded in the proper way.
To find out more about Yellow School Buses and for a full list of services visit www.yellowschoolbus.info

So the final full Council meeting of 2007 is over. The press were out in force for the congestion charge debate, and I can only apologise to them for the two hours of knockabout political gaming that went on before the main event.

Questions from the public gallery boomed out from the world’s single loudest microphone, puncturing the eardrums of many during the opening minutes, with a contest going on between Manchester Against Road Tolls (MART) and planted Bury Labour supporters as to who could ask the most obtuse questions to the Leader. I would say that, perhaps for the first time this year in any contest, Bury Labour won.

Of particular note to St Mary’s was the question from one Labour activist concerning the Butterstile Children’s Centre and suggesting that I have put the scheme in jeopardy by giving voice to resident’s concerns at the Council’s Planning Committee.

Once again they have missed the vital point - that Council officers have assured Councillors that if planning permission is granted at the pre-Christmas meeting then the building can still be completed on time. It will be tight, sure. But perfectly possible. And we will see it done.

I don’t like having a go at other parties and other Councillors on this blog or anywhere else. I genuinely believe that we’re all in it for the right reasons and got into this to try and do some good. But there are times when stuff goes on and I start to doubt people’s motives. This is one of those times.

The situation with the Children’s Centre wouldn’t be anywhere near this tight if it weren’t for the numerous mistakes made in the design and consultation phases by Council officers, the early parts of which were presided over by Labour’s Cllr Maggie Gibb in her capacity as Executive Member until May this year. The same Cllr Gibb who was in the same room as me when we were told on November 30^th that the planning delay wouldn’t mean the end of the scheme, but appears to have been distracted by something and missed this key point. The same Cllr Gibb who has been elected by the people of St Mary’s to represent their views to Council, but is dead against me doing the same at Planning. The same Cllr Gibb who allows her local activists to plant questions and write letters to the papers that do nothing but propagate lies and spread anxiety.

I do hope that the same momentary distraction which afflicted Cllr Gibb on November 30^th didn’t return during questions to the Executive last night, when I asked about outreach facilities from the Butterstile Children’s Centre to Rainsough. These are crucial, and heavily dependent on cooperation between Bury MBC and Salford City Council, who own the building where we hope these facilities will go.

I began a dialogue with Salford some time ago when I went to see Cllr Peter Connor, the Labour Executive Member for Housing in Salford. Nothing had been done for 15 years under his watch or that of Bury Labour, so I thought I’d build some bridges. Unfortunately Cllr Connor preferred talking to the press than to me, hence the smiling picture of him and Cllr Gibb in Rainsough some weeks later proclaiming a bright future thanks to Labour.

It’s nice when I can do a favour for Labour once in a while.

Unfortunately the promised bright future requires work. Work which I wanted us to do together, but which now I am barred from because Labour don’t like talking to us. Possibly because they think local people’s lives are all part of a big game of some kind.

So I asked the Leader of the Council last night what work has been ongoing between Bury MBC and Salford CC. There wasn’t much forthcoming on the detail, so I asked to be kept informed. What is clear though, is that if the Rainsough thing doesn’t happen, the blame lies absolutely with Labour. We started the ball rolling, we cajoled Bury into playing along, and now it’s stalled because going to the press to win votes is an easier option than working together with us horrible Liberal Democrats.

If it does happen, the people of Rainsough will be delighted, and so will I because I nudged Labour into action after 15 desparate years. But if it doesn’t, they should be ashamed.

I will keep you updated.

Rick

Today I have investigated an issue in my role as a governor of Butterstile Primary School, trying to make sure that a couple of children there don’t miss out on some Christmas festivities. I have spoken to a couple of other governors about it, and liaised with the Head, so now hopefully everyone will be happy and merry and full of festive joy.

Also today I have spoken to a resident about the state of his road - it’s only a couple of months until we have the impossible task of selecting which of the ward’s pot-holed roads receive the tiny amount of money available for maintenance in the coming year. Last year the amount of money needed just to refurbish the dozen neediest roads was five times the amount available. God only knows what the situation will be this year, but certainly nowhere near enough to fix them all. I had to tell the resident that his road would make the long-list for the second successive year, but that it mightn’t make it onto the final list. I had to agree with his assessment that short-term thinking like this leads to bigger problems in the long term. It’s frustrating that there’s little I can do but watch the cracks in the road get bigger!

And tonight, I am getting my photo taken. The new Focus (festive Christmas edition) is on its way shortly, and of course it won’t be complete without pictures of Donal O’Hanlon and I pointing at things. So that’s what we’re doing tonight, joined by Mary D’Albert, the Lib Dem Focus Team candidate for St Mary’s in 2008. I’m just off to fetch my Brylcreem…

Rick

This morning your three St Mary’s Councillors (Donal O’Hanlon and me from the Lib Dems, and Cllr Gibb from Labour) met with officers of the Council to discuss the Butterstile Children’s Centre.

A site visit from the Planning Committee is to be made in mid-December so that they can exercise their legitimate right to make a decision on the merits of the planning application. I have presented the views of concerned residents to the Committee, as is my job as their Councillor. I am glad that the Committee are taking the concerns seriously. Obviously though they need to weigh these against the fact that now, because of government deadlines and the mistakes of Bury Council in the formative stages of this project, failure to grant planning permission soon will mean that the ward loses out on a Children’s Centre. This is something I absolutely do not want. Families in this ward deserve a Children’s Centre, and if they don’t get one because mistakes have been made by Children’s Services and Planning at the Council which meant that proper consultation has led to fatal delays, this is a disgrace.

We also discussed the proposed outreach centre in Rainsough. After a decade and more of inaction over the neglected shops on Chapel Road, I am glad that my intervention with Cllr Connor of Salford may now lead to movement on this issue. It’s far from certain yet, but the ball is rolling after I met him, and it’s up to Labour-run Salford to keep it rolling now and come up with some money as well.

Politicians on all sides are united, I’m sure, in the desire to see a Children’s Centre in the ward. But sometimes I feel that politics is put before people by some, and that decisions are made without proper consultation simply with newspaper headlines in mind. We can’t go on acting like this or else local people will get even more sick of local politicians than they are now. Nobody votes, and the types of crazy headline-grabbing rubbish in the press recently is why. It’s easy to get in the papers with a big news story of your own concoction, but it’s a lot harder to serve every interest group in your ward fairly and try to get a positive outcome.

That’s what we’re trying to do, and I hope that this time next year the Children’s Centre and outreach facilities in St Mary’s will be about to celebrate their first successful Christmas. Our local people deserve nothing less.

Rick

I take back what I said yesterday about secretly wanting England to lose. It was horrible. Awful stuff. It might be amusing to think back on in a few years when Jose Mourinho or Martin Jol or Fabio Capello or (and let’s face it, he’ll probably be given the job by the buffoons in Soho Square) Steve Bruce lead us to World Cup 2010. But right now the founders of football have been pipped to qualification by a team who managed to beat Andorra 1-0. And on a pitch like a farm track despite spending nearly a billion quid on the stadium.

Thankfully McLaren has gone now, paying the price for the type of tactical bewilderment that had every fan in the nation screaming at the TV in despair. But it’s small comfort.

5-4-1 has never, in any match in history, worked. Unfortunately the England manager, the coach in what is supposedly the biggest job in world football, considered it appropriate to consign the team to hoofing the ball and allowing Peter Crouch to head it down to a Croatian for the first half. Idiocy, plain and simple. And now I have to reconsider my plans for summer 2008.

Thankfully there are things going on in the ward that distract me from the tumbling stumble-monkeys wearing the Three Lions with something approaching nonchalance. And many of these were discussed at the Lib Dem Group meeting last night. Such as…

- The planned extension to Forest Bank prison. We are investigating these plans with colleagues in Salford to find out more, and will be working with residents and our two Councils to get involved in this decision.

- Butterstile Children’s Centre. Again, let me say that all the work we are doing on this is on behalf of the residetns of surrounding streets, and the children using the site. We remain as committed as ever to securing a Children’s Centre for the ward, but need to make sure it’s done properly so that the best outcome happens in the end. And part of that is the site visit from Planning, which has been rescheduled now from 18th December to 17th December.

- Retreat Fountain. The granite replacement to the glass white elephant is now more or less done. Although it’s not what we wanted, it’s better than nothing and at least we can say farewell to the scaffolding and barriers after far too long.

- Prestwich Local Area Partnership. The next meeting of the LAP will take place next week, on Tuesday 27th November at 18.30 at Sedgley Park Primary School (on Kings Road / Bishops Road). The open forum part of the meeting, where you have the opportunity to raise any local issue to your Councillors and our partners, is between 19.45 - 20.30, although the whole meeting is open to the public if you want.

We talked about lots more too, but my mind keeps wandering back to the moment Steve McLaren decided to complement a back four of Richards (toddler), Lescott (2 caps), Campbell (73 years old and slower than a NASA shuttle transporter) and Bridge (rubbish) with a goalkeeper who had never played a competitive international before. Was he on the phone to HMRC giving them parcel delivery tips at the same time?

Such blithering incompetence at the highest levels of international football makes me feel a hell of a lot better about myself.

Rick

Last night the Planning Control Committee of Bury MBC decided to withhold its decision on the planned Butterstile Children’s Centre, and make a visit to the site on December 18th. It was a tight call, with a 5-5 split vote decided by the Chair’s casting vote. I’m glad the vote went the way it did because I think a number of the people voting against a site visit did so on the grounds of proper committee procedure rather than common sense. The fact that the question wasn’t raised at the proper time during the meeting shouldn’t be a good enough reason to stop local people having a fair hearing.

I think this is probably the most sensible decision for local people. We all want a Children’s Centre for the ward, but School Grove is a traffic and parking nightmare already, and a new Children’s Centre, no matter how well planned or small or anything else, will only make the situation worse.

Now local people will have the chance to show to Councillors on the Planning Committee exactly what we in the ward already know to be true - that the School Grove situation is an accident waiting to happen.

The final outcome of the application may be swayed more by the positives of a Children’s Centre than by the negatives of the traffic problems, but at least local people will have been granted the proper say that they’ve been denied so far.

Rick