John Hemming's Web Log

This week's glee club was particularly good. I copy below a photo of the event: Thanks to Jonathan Wallace for the Photo. There are a number of short videos on twitter .

theparentsunion.co.uk www.theparentsunion.co.uk theparentsunion.org.uk www.theparentsunion.org.uk Have now been started up. They are in fact all the same website, but this is to ensure that the Domain Name is linked in cyberspace.

One of my favourite albums of the 70s was Dark Side of the Moon. This is an interesting alternative version in a Reggae style. Mainly I prefer the original, but This version of Time (I have linked to the start) is interesting.

Karen Wilkinson and I have today resigned from PWAS (Parents Want a Say). The group has achieved some notable successes in the campaign to reverse the term time holiday regulations but it is clear there are irreconcilable differences over governance and organisational development. We believe the issue of unreasonable treatment of parents by schools in terms of absence as a result of government pressure remains important and we will be creating a new campaigning organisation to continue the campaign in this area.

I have recently had a look at This post which references Martin Narey's speech about adoption numbers earlier this year. In that speech he said: I don’t think adoption can ever be suitable for other than a minority of children in care. But I think that minority is probably more than 5,000 or just 7% of the care population” This goes to the nub of the statistical misunderstanding that has gone on for over a decade. The number of children in care is a static number. The number adopted per year is a number of children per year. You cannot sensibly compare one to the other. Because children stay in care for multiple years you need to look at the numbers of children going into care (per year). I take the view that you need actually to ignore the children placed in care under S20 and also to concentrate on those for whom adoption is a likely option (the younger ones). The sad thing is that this innumeracy lies behind the drive to increase adoption numbers to stupid levels.

It was interesting to read today the proposals from Warwickshire County Council that the city region combined authority for Coventry should be one for Warwickshire as well. Frankly this is a bit of a no brainer. Warwickshire curls around Coventry and is clearly in the economic city region. It is only people who reside in the Whitehall that believe that Coventry is best placed with Greater Birmingham. City Regions work as units of devolution if they have essentially economic city regions of a city and its travel to work area. Hence Lichfield, Bromsgrove, Kidderminster, Tamworth and Redditch fit comfortably into the wider Greater Birmingham area, but Coventry does not. It always caused tensions in the past and will continue to undermine the common interest of a Greater Birmingham City Region if it is continued.