British National Party Public Services News Bulletin w/c May 14, 2007
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1. 150,000 STUDENTS LEAVE SCHOOL EACH YEAR UNABLE TO COUNT

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publicservices/story/0,,2079784,00.html

Gordon Brown will today announce a review of the nation's numeracy strategy with a renewed focus on why 150,000 children leave school every year unable to count. He will also promise to find funds to ensure that by 2010 more than 300,000 at-risk pupils a year benefit from one-to-one tuition in maths, with 30 to 40 hours a year for those with greatest need. Mr Brown's initiative came as Tony Blair made a whistle-stop tour of schools to hail progress in education in the past 10 years, including the suggestion that England is on course to create 200 trust schools, double the number expected at this stage. The chancellor's plan is to introduce an ‘every child counts’ programme modelled on the Every Child a Reader programme that has had some success in boosting literacy among those children most at risk of falling behind. Mr Brown - on the fifth day of his leadership campaign - is determined to show he is addressing mainstream concerns. In an attempt to re-engage with disillusioned teachers, he will stress that he will work with the teaching professions to build a more successful numeracy programme. Ministers have felt frustrated that early progress on literacy and numeracy appears to have plateaued.

Mr Brown is supported today by the education secretary, Alan Johnson, who in an interview in the Guardian admits that a lack of motivation in children, largely stemming from their parents, lies at the heart of some children's failure to progress in reading and numeracy. He says the time has come to move from a debate about structures in schools to what goes on in the classroom. Mr Johnson recalls asking one teacher what he most wanted and he replied ‘a classroom full of Vietnamese’, by which he meant he knew he would be teaching motivated children encouraged by their aspirational parents. He quotes research that children will have heard 45m words by the time they are four years old if they come from a middle class background, 26m if they come from a working class background, and 13m if they come from a deprived background. ‘We're kind of nibbling at the edges of how we can help parents to read to their kids when they are young, to have aspirations for their kids, even though the parents' experience of school wasn't good. The reason why there's trepidation is it looks so much like the 'nanny state' but there's a big, big call out there for it,’ Mr Johnson says. He adds: ‘If you actually switch off the telly for a few hours each week and read to your child, it would be enormously important to your child's future.’

After visiting schools in south London, Mr Brown will today deliver an address to the Confederation of British Industry in which he will admit: ‘We are still some way off from being world class. It is unacceptable that we still have 150,000 children leaving primary school who aren't numerate. ‘Both a strong economy and an inclusive society require a fully numerate population. This is why, some eight years after we introduced the national numeracy strategy, I believe the time is now right fundamentally to review how we teach numeracy and to set out a plan for ensuring that every child is numerate by the time they leave primary school. Mr Brown will point out that the national numeracy strategy has had its successes, with an extra 83,000 or 76% of 11-year-olds reaching the expected level in 2006. He will also add that there are now 24,000 maths specialists teaching in maintained schools and double the number of trainee maths teachers than there were in 1998-99, helped by an increase in incentives, with £9,000 training bursaries and ‘golden hello’ payments of £5,000. Mr Brown wants to look at a greater role for maths mentors - for instance university students - who can give intensive support to pupils and assist in the classroom, and to look at how to involve parents more in raising numeracy.

He will find an extra £35m a year to fund one-to-one tuition in addition to the funding allocated in the 2007 budget. Meanwhile Mr Brown's campaign for the Labour leadership is today given a boost with the publication of a poll suggesting voters regard him as a better leader than the Conservatives' David Cameron. The Populus poll for today's Times shows Labour narrowing the gap on the Tories, jumping four points to 33% since a similar survey in April, with Mr Cameron's party unchanged on 37% and the Liberal Democrats dropping three points to 17%. When asked to rate various leaders on a scale of zero to 10, those taking part in the survey gave Mr Brown the edge over Mr Cameron, giving him an average score of 5, against the Tory leader's 4.95. But both trailed the outgoing Prime Minister, Mr Blair, who won an average rating of 5.22.

2. TARGETS 'FORCE US TO MAKE LUDICROUS ARRESTS' - POLICE

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2542834.ece

Frontline police called on the Government today to reverse the target-driven culture that has forced them to make ‘ludicrous’ decisions such as arresting a child for throwing cream buns. The Police Federation annual conference in Blackpool will debate today whether judging officers purely on how many arrests, cautions or on-the-spot fines they can deliver is making a mockery of the criminal justice system. The federation said the drive to meet Whitehall performance targets was compelling officers to criminalise middle England. The organisation published a dossier of ridiculous cases they claimed resulted from Home Office targets placed on beat bobbies.

The cases included: * A Cheshire man who was cautioned by police for being ‘found in possession of an egg with intent to throw’; * A child in Kent who removed a slice of cucumber from a tuna mayonnaise sandwich and threw it at another youngster and was arrested because the other child's parents claimed it was an assault; * A West Midlands woman arrested on her wedding day for criminal damage to a car park barrier when her foot slipped on her accelerator pedal; * A Kent child who was arrested for throwing cream buns at a bus; * A 70-year-old Cheshire pensioner - who had never been in trouble with the law - who was arrested for criminal damage after cutting back a neighbour's conifers too vigorously; * One West Midlands officer who was told to caution a man for throwing a glass of water over his girlfriend; *

Two Manchester children who were arrested under firearms laws for being in possession of a plastic toy pistol. A spokesman for the federation, which represents 130,000 rank-and-file officers in England and Wales, said the power to use discretion should be returned to the bobby on the beat. ‘We have got into the situation where everyone is so busy chasing targets and securing ticks in boxes we are on the verge of distancing ourselves from middle England,’ he said. ‘The cases we have compiled show incidents where an officer has been under such pressure to deliver it has resulted in an arrest or caution when even the officer themselves thinks it is ludicrous. ‘Understandably, when the public hears about this, they ask 'What the hell is going on?'.’ He added: ‘It is a Government agenda that is going down this avenue. ‘Officers are saying they are forced to make arrests or cautions for this lunacy because the Government believes they should be judged by what can be counted.’ Federation chairman Jan Berry said: ‘We have police officers who are considering leaving the service over this because it is not the job they signed up to do. ‘These examples we have compiled are ludicrous but when people are being pushed to show results, they will use anything they can to demonstrate they are doing a good job.’ Mrs Berry said she would raise the issue with Home Secretary John Reid when he attends the conference later in the week.

3. HOW CAN THE POLICE PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM BEHIND A DESK?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/25/npolice25.xml

I watched the outcome of the 1997 election from America and remember feeling excitement and even elation. I wondered what would become of Britain under a Labour government after the Conservatives had been in for so long. There was a new sense of hope, and there needed to be a change of direction. It promised so much. Tony Blair seemed compassionate, dynamic, less starchy and much more personable. His handling of Princess Diana's death got him off on the right foot and showed he could judge the public mind. What I saw of him on television in America created a new hope that things would be different, that politicians would be closer to the people. I came home in June 2001 just around the time of the general election that year. The first time I realised that the promises were not being fulfilled was during the row over student loans. That was when I realised that Tony Blair was not all that he seemed. There was a lot of ego-centrism, a feeling that this one person was bigger than the party and the public. I do not work well in the private sector and I wanted to contribute something to society. So when I came back, I worked for a while in a children's home, and in April 2003 I joined the police. I know it is a cliché, but I genuinely wanted to make a difference. I joined the police with high hopes.

The one incident that really helped crystallise my thoughts happened around New Year's Day in 2002. I saw on the news how a man had been stabbed to death when he tackled a couple of men who were trying to steal his car. I felt I couldn't just stand by and watch images like that without doing something. I wanted to get involved and make a change. But it was not long before I realised that this was not going to happen and that policing was not the job I thought. I was told about the paperwork when I joined and that it was a bugbear. But I was not prepared for what it was really like. Also, I found the inconsistency of the jurisprudence difficult. It was hard to spend so much time processing offenders only to have the courts not deal with them appropriately and then for me to have to explain to the victim what had happened. It was not our fault but most people do not distinguish between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, so we got the blame. The Government said it wanted to balance the system so more offenders were dealt with by the courts. But it is how they are dealt with that is the problem.

There is something very wrong early on in the process. Crime has every opportunity to take place because the police are not there on the streets to stop it. More offenders are coming into the criminal justice system because they are committing more crimes. The penal system is at bursting point. These are tangible examples of the Government's failure to get to grips with the prevention of crime, one of the founding Peelian principles of policing. It is all very well for Blair to say they will put measures in place to reduce recidivism but it is too late by then. The promises about less red tape and more police on the streets were beguiling and I even voted Labour in 2005. I should have smelled a rat by then. Now I have really come to understand the whole concept of Labour spin. John Reid, the Home Secretary, recently said he was bringing in legislation to deal with hooligans and knife crime. How can he say that when they have police stuck in stations filling in forms? By the time I came to question it all it was too late; so I decided to go public with my worries. I gave an interview to a Sunday newspaper which had not been approved by my superiors. They threatened to suspend me for bringing the force into disrepute and I decided to resign. I left the force just a few weeks ago. It was a sad decision as I had hoped to put something back into society.

But I was also relieved because it was a poisoned chalice. I wanted to serve the public - but how was I to do that sitting behind a desk? I am still looking for a job in the public sector, though not one burdened with targets and performance culture. I feel the situation in this country has never been more precarious. The British people have never been so exposed. As much as I try to remain optimistic, I fear that our society is in moral freefall and its fabric is deteriorating before our eyes. Institutions which have withstood the test of decades if not centuries have been obliterated in the last 10 years. This Government's legacy can be considered ignominious at best. The question is: can we regain what we have lost or are standards, respect and decent moral values, courtesy of the Labour government, gone forever? Biography: Johnno Hills, 34, was until recently a police officer with Sussex constabulary. In 1997, he was living in America as a student in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, studying sociology and French at Dickinson College. He joined the police in 2003 in Thames Valley before transferring to Sussex. Mr Hills is single and lives in Hove. He has set up a website to campaign for police reform called realpolicing.co.uk

4. SCHOOLS MUST PROMOTE RACE RELATIONS OR CLOSE – GOV’T

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/08/nschools08.xml

Schools with large numbers of white pupils may be taken over or closed if they fail to promote race relations and links between different religious groups, according to Government guidance. Those in rural areas or leafy suburbs should be twinned with ethnically mixed schools in the inner city, it suggests. Christian faith schools should strike up partnerships with Muslim and Jewish institutions, while other community schools should organise more trips to churches, mosques and synagogues. In a move designed to stop children drifting toward extremism, all schools will have a legal duty from September to break down barriers and promote ‘community cohesion’. Jim Knight, the schools minister, said yesterday the rules would be enforced by Ofsted, which has the power to sack the governing body or recommend closure if schools fail to comply. The Commission for Racial Equality has warned that Britain's segregated schools are ‘a ticking time bomb waiting to explode’.

The new guidance said: ‘Every school - whatever its intake and wherever it is located - is responsible for educating children and young people who will live and work in a country which is diverse in terms of culture, faith, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. ‘The staff and pupil populations of some schools reflect this diversity, allowing pupils to mix with those from different backgrounds. ‘Others do not, and need to make links with other schools and organisations in order to give their pupils the opportunity to mix with and learn with, from and about those from different backgrounds.’ According to latest figures, about one in eight children in English schools now speak English as a second language and numbers have soared over the past 10 years. But ministers are concerned some schools are still being monopolised by single racial or religious groups, acting as a breeding ground for extremism.

One in 20 primary schools have no ethnic minority pupils and 323 schools have more than half of pupils from Bangladeshi or Pakistani backgrounds. Draft guidance, which is out to consultation before becoming law later this year, recommends field trips with a racial or faith angle, and inviting religious leaders to schools. Speaking at the National Association of Head Teachers' annual conference in Bournemouth yesterday, Mr Knight said: ‘I am quite keen on faith-based schools twinning with those of other faiths or within the network of schools within their community and talking to other schools about their faith.’ The law will be equally binding on schools with predominately Asian populations and those with large numbers of white children. John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: ‘In many troubled communities schools are already the only institutions promoting community cohesion.’ Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: ‘It is yet another unnecessary Government initiative.’ David Willetts, the Tory education spokesman, said: ‘The Government should be leaving head teachers to do their jobs.’