eco79

Yep, totally understandable. I liked the doctors there too.

Have you ever been to this baby clinic before? I left the surgery after repeated bad experiences. It did start at 1.30 a year ago but you want to be getting there 15 mins early to line up and get a number. When you do line up, be prepared for swathes of folk to then push in front of you when the numbers are released. I asked a lady not to push in and she threatened to kill me and my baby when we left the surgery. Sorry to be so negative and hope it has changed in the last 6 months?

Weight watchers have set up a new one on Bushey Hill Road, opposite the Art College on Peckham Road. Quite close to ED and plenty of free parking.

Camberwell Cars took us twice in two days. Same guy as well. He said they do a lot.

Wow! I've got half a brain, but responding to this consultation requires detailed reading of an enormously wordy document, in order to answer such fantastically specific questions such as.... "Do the dispensation guidelines still adequately reflect current operational issues?" What? Who cares? Can you just make my baby sleep longer than 4.45am by sorting out your planes?

Have a look at the thread in the family room. James Barber PMed people with kids [cold contact by finding us in the Family Room] and explained the need for support for Harris who would fix all of our our primary school problems.

I got 50p for a first tooth in 1988. I asked a saddo I know to work out the inflation....and it would now be 90p.

It was pretty horrible, as you're obviously tired from waking at 5am [in our case] and then you keep your little one up until normal morning nap time [hideous] and instead of letting them sleep/catching an hour or more yourself, you wake them up 30 mins later. But it did fix things.

You do realise if we all keep recommending kuki we'll never get an appointment :)

We had this and somebody advised us to specifically shorten the morning nap without changing any other naps. Problem sorted in 2 days.

Thanks all, I'm not too fussed on when he sleeps...I'd just like him to have more than 55 minutes a day. Still early days I guess and yes I'm sure morning nap will be gone soon.

My 10 month old son was a troublesome napper when he was titchy but from 7 months onward I had nailed naps. I put a lot of hard work in and had a baby who would settle himself for a 45 minute morning nap and a 1 1/2 - 2 hour lunch nap. Off to bed at 6.45pm and woke religiously at 6am. He started nursery in the 1st week of December and his naps are all over the shot while at nursery. He's been back with us over the Christmas holidays and even with the upheaval of staying at 3 different family members up north, he still slipped straight back to his nap routine. Nursery say that he doesn't want a morning nap. Then they say he fell asleep while playing at 11am [no surprise right...with no morning nap]. They wake him up at 11.30 for lunch and then he struggles to go back asleep at 12.30pm [when all of nursery have their lunch nap] and only has 30 minutes. Which makes sense if he had a nap at 11am. I can't bear the thought of my little fella, trudging through until he falls asleep on his face in a pile of toys. I don't know how much I can ask of them in terms of putting him to sleep? They have a little dark room with cots. I've provided a sleeping bag and some of his nap time books but I'm aware that they have other babies to work with. To add, my son is very happy at nursery, is always happy to see his key worker and always seems cheery at drop off and collection. I also like all the staff in the baby room. But I'm really keen on good day time sleep. During early December he didn't learn a new thing...and then after 9 days at home he can sit up himself and pull to standing and cruise round the room. Am I expecting too much?

Sainsbury's have a lot of little lego goodies. Lego keyrings with a torch [including a Darth Vader one], a lego sandwich box [i don't know how big your stocking is], a lego luggage tag that my friend's son has on his PE bag....

The boys in my tutor group are completely addicted to Top Trumps games at the minute. Just a thought.

For those of you reading these pages posted by Fuschia, 'equivalent GCSEs' are where schools choose to study BTECs and the like. A pass grade at BTEC science, which I can only equate to a colouring in course, previously equated to 4 C grades at GCSE. It is a coursework only course where, for example, an assignment could consist of labelling a diagram of a building with the materials used [plastic, concrete, glass, wood] and would gain a pass.

I'm basically out of water now. Thames Water website just says they're working on it. Took half an hour to run a baby bath tub. Gutted.

I'm on Shenley and this is still a problem? Anyone else?

Thanks Scruffy Mummy, I did not know that. It did always baffle me.

I think we're done :) I can't stand it when all my spare time gets sucked in to trying to argue a point on the forum! Good chat though.

I genuinely don't believe fair banding was set up to neautralise the problems of academically polarised schools! A school should be there to serve it's local community, whoever that community are. It shouldn't pick and choose to benefit a few.

James, in order for for parents to claim that the Champion Hill estate was within close walking distance, they had to claim Greendales as a safe route to school. Which is odd, as I wouldn't walk down Greedales alone in the dark. But that's an aside, How do you start a school? If you're not a big academy/sponsor/rich person? Can a group of people get backing if they can find funding? Is the issue that Harris are so slick at this they can do it quicker than anyone else?

Find your local CofE church, look at their website, and at least one Sunday morning service between now and Christmas will be a family carol service, usually with a fun story/activity for families.

No, sorry, I'm not saying it is easy to get low attainers to perform. EAL students make greater leaps in achievement as their English improves. They are not low attainers, they are hindered by language skills at the outset. Therefore a Y7 EAL student may be presenting as a lower attainer but are actually bright. Therefore their progress looks more obvious. Does that make sense? (break time iPhone use is currently hindering my performance ;))

LondonMix, All schools look at the Value Added for each student to monitor their progress in that way. And yes, looking at these figures they've done a good job at pupil improvement, but so have a lot of schools the last few years. My point about the level playing field is the change of intake. One year you're not an academy and you take in everyone, the next year you are, select, and improve. But if you start to pick at these statistics you've provided.... Charter had 7 pupils in their cohort with English as a second language. Harris had 50 students. Achievement of students who enter at Y7 with lower than average literacy skills will make much larger leaps in their attainment as their English improves between KS2 and KS4. You could be here all day. Anyway, I should go to work....

Kitty, the problem happens when one of your quartiles is over subscribed. Say you've got 100 kids trying to get a place at the school. Under previous systems if they all lived close by, they'd get in, end of story. But now, 29 of those kids are in the lowest quartile say. There's only space for 25 of them on the school rules. So 4 kids can't go. They might have named that school as a first choice causing problems in choosing another school, and that other school won't be their closest. Tricky times when you're 11. But the big issue is, when an Academy starts, they are always seen to take over a failing school and improve it. Everyone thinks....WOW, they must have such good facilities, a beautiful building, better teachers, brighter management - when actually all they did was ensure their intake was cleverer than last years by their tricky and not well publicised admissions policy.