News Update Continued

Wednesday 31st October 2007:

Briefly at the beginning of the news bulletin they mention the Madeleine McCann story in that there are no further leads, but that the first and only suspect (other than the McCann’s themselves) is being re-interviewed again.

A heavily featured story was that of Mr Parry. Two IRA bombs were set off in Ireland in 1993 killing innocent 12-year-old Tim and 3-year-old Jonathon. Tim’s parents have since worked tirelessly to achieve peace in Ireland, so that something positive could come of their tragedy.

A Parry and Ball youth centre has been set up in Ireland (Foundation for Peace charity), this is open to all children of any race or religion. This was opened on the 7th anniversary of the children’s death. The parents still had unanswered questions as to why Warrington was chosen.

Examples of posters, that those that didn’t want to be involved in Halloween would have up tonight, were shown to increase awareness.

The main story that dominated the news regarding children and or education regarded Brown’s pledge to end failing schools.

The idea is that schools should all be achieving a minimum of 30% of their children receiving 5 good GCSE’s (including English and Maths). The schools have 5 years in which to accomplish this before being closed down.

The steps are as follows:

· Failing school

· Improve it – if improvement fails…

· Change the management – if management change fails…

· There will be a take over – if the take over fails…

· The school will be closed.

Although this may seem drastic Brown quite rightly suggests that the public don’t want to send their children to failing schools, and why should they? The space of a failing school could be used for many other projects, including those that support children, for example an area for an extended school or a safe play ground that children can access after school and keeps them outside.

He also commented on the fact that schools should be encouraging parents to become more involved. However, the harsh reality is that some parents just aren’t interested. Those that are get involved, those that aren’t don’t. And there are those that want to but can’t, and more “encouragement” is going to change the reason, whether it be a job, childcare etc, that they can’t be more involved in school life.

Who knows if this will work? But at least it is a step in the right direction.