Today is the day!
Two votes in Southend – Local and European Elections.
Don’t forget to vote Helen BOYD for Blenheim Park, to join the Conservative Team on the council.
Vote Conservatives for Europe, as we will give you a choice: In/Out before the end of 2017.
And if all that fails… Please vote Conservative today… because my feet hurt from pounding the streets! 🙂
Whilst out speaking to residents yesterday Maria, who lives smack bang in the middle of Blenheim Park Ward, handed me one of her leaflets.
She is organising a Jumble Sale to raise funds for the Macmillian Cancer Support charity.
I will hopefully be there at some point during the day and I hope anyone else who can make it will pop along.
On Friday night I was pleased to be one of a few Borough Councillors attending the annual meeting of Leigh Town Council.
A range of issues were covered, from street lighting, allotments and the community centre – which it must be said LTC have put to great use.
I was also delighted to hear about the reduction in LTC’s share of the council tax – something I had been calling for here. Not everything I was asking for but certainly a good move in the right direction.
Also, the Good for Leigh Awards were given out. Here is Caroline Parker (the LTC Chairman) handing them out the two recipients. Sadly I didn’t catch their names, but I did hear about the charitable and other work they had done to help Leigh:
 
Well I never expected to be this long away from the ‘blogosphere’, but I certainly have been busy with both ward and town-wide issues.
Town-wide we’ve had:
Ward wise we’ve had:
Progress has also be made on the A127 Kent Elms crossing – the 1960’s crossing not really fit for 2014 – this takes a lot of time and money, but progress is being made!
Here is Helen Boyd – your Blenheim Park Ward Conservative Candidate for Southend Borough Council elections on 22nd May 2014, outside the fence we had fixed (thanks LTC!) in Randolph Close only yesterday.
More blogging before the month is out. Promise!
Helen Boyd – Fence in Randolph Close (around the allotments)
For matters relating to elections this website is hosted by WordPress, and Helen Boyd is promoted by James Courtenay, c/o SWCA, 67 Leigh Road, Leigh-on-Sea, SS9 1JW
The Schools Adjudicator has today announced their decision to overturn Essex County Council’s decision to discontinue (close) the Deanes School.
I know this will make the parents and c.150 children we have at the school very happy as well future pupils who didn’t know whether they should apply or not!
Southend Council has been at the forefront of objecting to the decision, as it was not in the best interests of our pupils.
Here is a link for the full decision:
http://www.education.gov.uk/schoolsadjudicator/decisions/database/a00232062/stp597tds
There is a public meeting with the Office of the Schools Adjudicator on Thursday 30th January at 7pm, regarding the proposed closure of Deanes school.
Parents are welcome to attend to give their views. I will continue to do so in writing on behalf of Southend Council.
More details here: http://www.deanesschool.co.uk/news/?pid=2&nid=1&storyid=469
More on the budget soon – particularly the success of my and my colleagues’ attempts to highlight the increasing burden of Leigh Town Council… they are proposing to decrease their precept this year – Wahoo!! for a lot of residents hit by a 102% rise in the LTC charge over the past 4 years.
But, whilst this year’s austerity has led to savings of ÂŁ7.32m (against a new reduced budget of ÂŁ133.37m) being required, the Conservative Administration is proposing to be able to do this with a FREEZE in Council Tax – the third freeze we have given in four years (so that is just a 1.75% rise in 4 years), we have also managed to find some money to invest in an area I know dear to a lot of residents’ hearts – improving the outcome of our schools.
Being responsible for Children and Learning in Southend, I’m pleased to announce that I and my colleagues in the Conservative Administration are proposing, in this year’s budget that we spend an additional £200,000 a year, for a minimum of three years, to speed up the improvement of some of our schools in Southend.
This includes money for:
An Early Years Adviser – Â To ensure that achievement of our youngest kids is above the national average and help those from the poorest/most deprived backgrounds catch up.
A Secondary Education Adviser – To advise, help, support, coach and assist headteachers and the leadership of our secondary schools needing improvement.
Funding for Executive Head, and Deputy Head, teachers – allowing experienced headteachers from Outstanding schools, experienced in managing change, improving – and sustaining improvement of – performance, to pass on their expertises to others.
Whilst the council, and the country, are having to make cut backs, this investment into our children’s future, coupled with this Government’s increased Pupil Premium (an extra ÂŁ1.7m this year) grant really does show that the Conservative Administration not only cares deeply about the education Southend’s children get, but is prepared to increase funding to it – investing for our town’s future.
I was delighted to attend the nativity play ‘Hey Ewe’ last night at Bournes Green Infants School. Over half the school was involved.
Wonderful performance – the pupils did their parents, staff and themselves proud!
As the Chair of Governors said, “X factor watch out!”
This was the question I was asked by the Echo recently. Today they published my view (reproduced below) and that of Julian Ware-Lane – a Labour councillor who seems to oppose quite a lot of things – Grammar Schools, Faith Schools, Free Schools, reforming our Youth Services into something that young people want – to name just a few. But, in the interests of fairness, you can see his views on Grammar Schools here.
It is interesting that the grammar schools are always referred to (when talking about ‘how few’ of our children go there) as the borough’s. They are not. The four grammar schools are academies that are geographically located in Southend. It is not down to Southend Council to choose who goes there.
When it comes to numbers it is noteworthy that these four grammars make up 50% of the grammar schools in Essex and 2.5% of grammar schools in England. Southend-on-Sea has slightly less than a third of one percent of the population of England. Yet approximately 50% of the pupils that attend these four schools are from Southend. You don’t need a CSE (or a GCSE if you’re lucky to be young enough!) Grade 1 in maths to see the point I’m making here. Nevertheless I hope it will be more in the near future – if that’s what parents want and they are the right place for the individual child.
The Echo asks: ‘Is selective education working?’ – Yes:
“In Southend we have a mixed economy of secondary schools – special, faith, community and academy schools – including our four grammar schools.
Being responsible for schools in Southend I want to maximise the choice for parents, whilst ensuring every child receives a high quality education. In my view grammar schools are an important element in doing just this.
Over many years grammar schools have shown that they provide an excellent all round education, enabling pupils from all backgrounds – rich or poor – to access some of the best universities in the world. I am proud of the achievements of our young people attending the grammar schools and for the positive experience the schools provide.
However, grammar schools are not suitable for all. I am equally proud, not only of the exam results, but of the preparation for adulthood that our other schools provide to the majority of Southend’s children.
I want to increase the number of our town’s children benefiting from attending a grammar school, if that is the right education for them, but I also want to support the fantastic efforts of the other schools we have.
We are fortunate that our grammar schools and our non-selective schools work in partnership to improve the educational provision across the town.
I believe that grammar schools play a very significant role in providing some of the brightest children with a fantastic education, however my number one ambition is that all of our children, whatever school they attend, go to one that is Good or Outstanding.”
The ‘no’ answer can be seen here.
There was a short 7hr 15 minute (!) Full Council meeting on Thursday night into Friday morning.
My notable contributions can be seen on the web cast here:
Statement on Kingsdown School being temporarily closed, followed by answering a question regarding increased costs for parents.
I was asked about a section of the Southend Skills Strategy, well sort of. Here the Leader of the Independent Party was trying to suggest that we didn’t taking Leigh’s fishing industry seriously. Rather silly when at the same Cabinet and scrutiny meeting we had had a separate paper on a grant for that area and we have had many other grants over the years and invested money (quite rightly) into this area.
It was the Lib Dems’ turn to raise Kent Elms Crossing (petition) this time, and I added my voice to the call to get on with sorting it out – the Administration certain wants to, we just have to get the money from Government first… something I know my colleague Tony Cox is keen to do, partly because I keep on at him about it!
We also had a discussion on the cross-party Working Party’s recommendations on the Future of the Youth Service, which Cabinet had endorsed in full. A little bit of politicking going on here, but I and I think all members of the Working Party were quite pleased with the outcome of our review.
At around 1:15am we went into “Part 2” as we like to call it (private session with the public not allowed)… but not before we all gave a round of applause to the one gentleman who had managed to stay all the way through! Here we had a discussion on the performance of our schools, before all being allowed to go home to bed at approximately 1:40am.
27th February 2014 before we get the chance to do it all again!
