Eltham Lights Up 2016 and celebrates Roald Dahl this time

Willy Wonka and his Oompa Loompas come to Eltham!

Central London may have had its switching on of the Christmas lights last Thursday but for many families and residents in a certain south-east London suburb, the annual Eltham Lights Up event was the place to be.

Organised by Royal Greenwich Borough, this much loved Lantern Parade in Eltham High Street and the switching on of its own Christmas lights is well attended by locals. In the weeks leading up to it, local primary school children make illuminated lanterns which are proudly paraded behind their school banner. The event was also part of the Eltham Arts Winter Festival 2016 which ran from 29 October to 20 November and showcased over 150 arts events in Eltham this year. In fact, Eltham Arts's own Festival Finale takes place today, 20 Nov, at the White Hart.

This year's Lights Up theme was Roald Dahl on the occasion of what would have been his 100th birthday. Emergency Exit Arts, an arts organisation based in nearby Greenwich, which specialises in using visual performance, processions, puppetry and pyrotechnics, brought alive characters from Dahl's enduring children's books. They joined lots of gleeful lantern-toting children (and parents!) to celebrate this annual festive occasion now in its 17th year.

Here's my short film of this year's Eltham Lights Up thrown together from my footage:

I remember first attending this event when our two children were pre-school aged and were beside themselves with excitement waving glow sticks, watching the colourful parade and then the finale fireworks from the top of the M&S building. In subsequent years they've paraded with the Gordon Primary School, arriving early to assemble in what was then the playground of the nearby Church of England School in Roper Street, now the subject of scaffolding and the erection of a new building on this historic site just behind the High Street.

Now young teens, our children are naturally more concerned to 'hang out' with their friends wandering around trying to buy the best hot chocolate, leaving me to enjoy the parade from a different perspective.

Despite concerns about the effect on this event of the current improvements being made to Eltham High Street, the Council rushed to have it ready to host the Lights Up event and luckily succeeded. However, after some previous cases of hot falling debris, the fireworks have for the last couple of years been replaced by other finales, this year some fiery shooting musical flames. There was also musical entertainment laid on across three stages - on Passey Place, next to St Mary's and in the Eltham Leisure Centre - this years' acts included the Pytchwood folk duo, the band Little Beach, the teen boy band Decks and Quatrz, the Eltham hill School Choir and the Rock Choir. Welcome though this was, it made it difficult to get round and see them all!

People persevered through the early heavy rain and were rewarded with dry, crisp weather in time for the switching on and the parade itself. And so another Eltham Lights Up comes to an end marking the start of Christmas.

Other local lighting up events include:

Woolwich Winter Warmer
Saturday 26 November, 1pm to 5.30pm - General Gordon Square and Powis Street, SE18

Greenwich Christmas Festival
Saturday 3 December 12pm to 6pm - Cutty Sark Gardens, SE1

My posts on previous Eltham Lights Up events:
Eltham Lights Up 2012
Eltham Lights Up 2011
Eltham Lights Up 2010
Eltham Lights Up 2009

It's time for ParksFest 2016 in Eltham

Parksfest 2016 has been announced - it's a now-annual Royal Greenwich Borough-wide programme of free cultural entertainment in the Borough's parks and open spaces. It's been running for many years and includes Eltham's many open spaces and parks during the coming June and July - here's a selection of what Eltham is putting on show this summer:

They'll be lots of familiar talent on show from in and around Eltham, as well as food stalls and also entertainment for the children.

The ParksFest programme is co-ordinated by the Greenwich Parks Forum, a network of twenty four Friends of Parks groups.  The full calendar of all the ParksFest events this summer:

Find out more at the ParksFest 2016 site

"Warm Welcome to Winter in Eltham" - Eltham Arts Winter Festival nearly here!

One of the biggest arts and cultural events to hit Eltham starts next Saturday.

The Eltham Arts Winter Festival takes place from 31 October to 22 November at venues all over the SE9 area. This unique three-week community festival also includes an Art Trail of fabulous art which can be seen in and around Eltham High Street and surrounding areas.

Poetry, theatre, music, exhibitions, talks, quizzes and yes, a beer festival (!), can all be found during the Festival in SE9's cafes, shop windows, galleries, community centres, theatres and historic buildings. It all kicks off with a Halloween-flavoured opening event on Saturday 31 October at Eltham's Passey Place from 11am to 3pm.

I'm very excited to have been involved in this entirely voluntary initiative organised by Eltham Arts, a community organisation established in 2013 to promote the arts and led by its energetic Chair, Gaynor Wingham. So many people have contributed, from local artists of all sorts, local venues, local businesses and many other Eltham Arts supporters. We were delighted to have the tremendous support of the widely-read Greenwich Visitor local newspaper which has published the full Festival programme in its October issue with an introductory article by me.

You can download the full Festival programme at the Eltham Arts website, including details of the Art Trail, or pick up a copy of Greenwich Visitor at various venues (including the Eltham Sainsbury's).  Do also check out Eltham Arts on Twitter for updates, news and any changes.

In the meantime, here's an at-a-glance run down of the events which you can enlarge:

Could you create 'A Postcard From Eltham'?

See the Eltham Arts website for more information.

ParksFest 2014 at Well Hall Pleasaunce

West meets East: from Eltham, England, to Punjab, India

So finally we are taking the children to visit India, the place from which my family hail, and from whence my parents emigrated to the UK in the early 1960s. It was in London that my brother and I were then born and where we have made our own lives.

My husband, however, is not from an Indian background, his family being born and bred south Londoners for generations. All these factors hare inevitably meant that our children's bi-culturality is a bit lop-sided. Despite the best implorings of my mother, my talking in Punjabi regularly to my children in an otherwise English setting just didn't happen. And so, after all these years of only hearing about India and being touched by Indian culture in a peripheral way, our children will finally get to see the place and meet some extended family. My husband has done this once before, 14 years ago, the year we were married when, with the eagerness of a newly-wed he foolishly agreed to meet more of the the in-laws.

I have been to India many times before I was married, though less so in the last couple of decades. Incongruously, my brother and I were even sent back for a few months of boarding school there, near Simla, in our primary school years, while my mother was in the UK. A madness that my mother soon changed her mind about, hence the short time there.

It was really at my mother's encouragement that we have set up this current trip. She still visits India frequently, having siblings and nephews/nieces there, and around 2002 she finally bought her own little house in the Punjabi new town of Chandigarh. Not getting any younger, she was very keen to show our kids 'her manor' and to show them off to family there. She and my brother will be traveling to India a week earlier and will meet us there.

The visit is most significant for me because of our children. It's that strange diasporic phenomena of having perhaps emotionally separated from your heritage country, and even having ambivalent feelings about it, yet despite this so wanting your children to have an attachment to it. An Irish acquaintance tells me that this is exactly his experience when taking his children back to Ireland for the first time. It's a strange crossroads of a time when all sorts of repressed emotions come to the fore, questions of identity and belonging, which perhaps you had not really appreciated before. But also looking back on my younger years and musing that, what may be generational differences within some families, in a diasporic family these also become interwoven with cultural differences between the different generations.

But back to the trip - we'll be visiting the northerly state of Punjab, which borders Pakistan of course, flying in to New Delhi and then basing ourselves in Chandigarh, at my mother's house. More of that later, but let me set the geographical scene...

So here's a map (click on images to enlarge) of the upper half of India, with its capital, New Delhi, in the north. Our time there will only touch the NW area of the vast land that is India, and within the state of Punjab.

This is the territory that our 12 day trip will cover, with the main places of staying/visiting marked out.

We've got this tentative itinerary planned, but this will very much depend on the pace, and the heat, that we and children can cope with once there:

Day 1

Sun: Overnight flight To New Delhi from Heathrow
(we've pushed the boat out and will be flying in Virgin's 'Premium Economy' class - here's the oh-so-important additional 'luxuries' you get, that mean you can look down on Economy, though still look 'up' to Upper Class - a bit like the 1960s sketch with Cleese and the Ronnies...I think a good linen tablecloth is always an essential... We decided that the kids could best cope with the 8-9 hrs flight if they slept overnight, especially as we still have the 5-6 hour drive to Chandigarh ahead once we land. Let's see how that works out...)

Day 2

Mon: Arrive at New Delhi
(to be met by the car which mum will have sent ahead - that should be interesting trying to find the driver in the busy airport...)

Drive, 5-6 hours to Chandigarh
This will be along the (in)famous Grand Trunk Road, one of Asia's oldest roads apparently, and much eulogized in various Punjabi songs - a bit like America''s 'Route 66'. We'll be stopping for lunch at one of the 'dhabas' (or roadside cafes) which Punjab is well-known for. 

Day 3 and 4
Tue and Wed: ​​Chandigarh
And so finally we will get to spend some time at my mother's place in Chandigarh. Known as the 'City Beautiful', Punjabis are very proud of having India's first 'planned city', as famously designed by Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier. He was commissioned by Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, to build a city that would replace Lahore, the previous capital of the Punjab lost to newly created Pakistan after partition in 1947.

Day 5

Thurs : the village tour

Leave very early to travel to west Punjab by car (3.5hrs) to my mother's ancestral village home, and the villages of some nearby relatives (area around no. 3, Moga, on the map). My mother has very efficiently pre-informed various relatives about when we will be arriving at each of them and how long we will stay at each. This is to avoid, very wisely, the protracted insistence at each place on extended hospitality involving long elaborate meals. Stay overnight at cousin's house.

Day 6

Friday: travel to Amritsar

Leave after lunch for Amritsar (2.5hrs by car), the most northerly place we'll be visiting and only about 35 mins from the Pakistan border. This is the site, of course, of the so-called 'Golden Temple' or to give it its proper name, 'Sri Harmandir Sahib'. It is the holiest of places for Sikhs to visit, akin to a Sikh Vatican. It was in the UK news this February when archived papers revealed the hitherto unknown involved of the British government in the events of 1984 at the Temple - this was when the Indira Gandhi's government unleashed a violent attack on the Temple, killing many people (575 officially, more unofficially). Amritsar is also the site of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, in April 1919. That atrocity was depicted at length in Attenborough's Gandhi film.

We hope to visit both these places - one very beautiful, the other very poignant.

Amritsar is an iconic Punjabi city - steppeed in history, narrow cobbled lanes and famous for its food and 'chic/vintage traditional' fashion shopping,  We plan to stay overnight in a nice hotel, hopefully with swimming pool to give the kids some fun. We might also, if time, visit the Waggah border ceremony at dusk - famous for its nightly ritualistic and exaggerated 'closing of the gates' ceremony between the Indian and Pakistan border, as depicted on an episode of Michael Palin: "a masterly display of just how angry you can get without hitting anything!"

Day 7

Sat:

​​Early breakfast at Amritsar hotel, swim, pack, travel back to Chandigarh (4.5hrs)

Day 8, 9, 10

Sun, Mon, Tues: in ​​Chandigarh. On Sunday - celebrating Vaisaiki, the birth of the Sikh religion.

Day 11

Wed: ​Travel To Delhi

​​Check in to hotel, ​​explore Delhi​​ and celebrate daughter’s birthday, maybe at Connaught Place’s TGIF, to give her something familiar.

Day 12

Thurs: Delhi sightseeing

​​Breakfast in Delhi Hotel, b​rowse Chandi Chawk​​ ('moonlight place') an ancient shopping site, visit the 16th century Mogul Red Fort, ​cool off by the pool in the afternoon and ​explore the markets in the evening (hmm..bit ambitious this day)

Day 13

Fri: ​​hotel then fly home

Leave for Delhi airport and flight back home to UK.

And that, my friends, is the plan! Let's see how it works out. We're quite relaxed about changing things where we want to, and go with the flow, but you've got to have an aim, haven't you?

Our trip will have the added interest of a little election going on in India - the election of the 16th Prime Minister of independent India, by over 814 million citizens over six weeks of voting beginning 7 April. The front runner could unfortunately see India having its first non-secular leader, against the spirit of the constitution established by the first PM Nehru. 

Lots more I could write, but another time...so adios, ciao and namaste. We out.

Eltham Arts

Are you interested in the arts in Eltham?

Well, I've been very remiss in not writing much earlier about about an exciting new organisation in Eltham. Eltham Arts is a new initiative started over a year ago, by the enterprising and enthusiastic Gaynor Wingham, encouraged by the Eltham Town Centre Partnership and now supported by others, including Amy Duffin, SEnine reporter and @NewElthamWoman on Twitter. 

Eltham Arts aims to celebrate and encourage Eltham's creativity and talent, for people of all ages and backgrounds. Its activities got off to a strong start with a poetry competition last year, 'Eltham in Verse' with a splendid book published as a result. I bought my copy when I bumped into Gaynor at the library in Eltham....

And now Eltham Arts are running a short story competition, 'Tales of Eltham', with entries to be in by 21 February 2014.

There'll be a celebratory event on 23 April 2014 when the winners of the short story competition will be announced at the World book Night celebrations, to be held at the Eltham Centre. There are plans for a book too containing some of the short stories. So why not have a go? See here for more details.

Eltham Arts have a rich vein of arts to mine, and to develop further - in Eltham we already have the Bob Hope Theatre, the Priory Players, the Eltham Choral Society, the Greenwich Soul Choir and Edith Nesbitt's writing heritage and much more. 

In fact, there's so much going on that Gaynor Wingham from Eltham Arts is now writing a column in Greenwich Visitor, a monthly local newspaper - see its website www.TheGreenwichVisitor.com

There's lots more planned, including a series of talks,' Eltham Entertains' at the Eltham Leisure Centre (2 Archery Rd, Eltham SE9 1HA), with the first of these taking place on 12 February, 7-9pm.

So, a belated and warm welcome to Eltham Arts!

Eltham Lights Up 2013 - photos

View down Eltham High Street of an illuminated pirate ship approaching (from ?Treasure Island), with primary school children parading behind in the lantern procession.

 

A beautiful Fairy Godmother on stilts, from a nearby pantomime perhaps...

Two Georgian men wandering around Eltham High Street

A primary school group enthusiastically drums its way along the parade

and to finish, the spectacular fireworks, as ever, from the roof of M&S

Very well done to the organisers. It's a great event for children, families and the community generally to get together for some fun.

Original post announcing the event, and links to past Lights Up events here.

Apple Day at Woodlands Farm Trust this Sunday

Ooh look what I found in my son's school book bag...

Medieval Jousting at Eltham Palace

The 'Grand Medieval Joust' at Eltham Palace has been splendid this weekend. We visited on Saturday 15 June and, in addition to the central event of the actual joust, were able to enjoy some of the stalls of medieval artifacts and life from that period generally. 

There was an very realistic medieval camp 'enactment' where my husband wasn't sure whether he was walking into some of the 'medieval actors' private lunchtime or whether they were acting out a medieval dinner party, complete with drunken nobleman. Turned out it was the latter! The archery expert at his stall was excellent - I now know more about bows than I could ever imagine (there are ideally made of Mediterranean yew, don't you know...). He referred very knowledgeably to the various historical sources used for evidence eg. the Luttrell Psalter (''...a celebrated manuscript, commissioned by a wealthy landowner in the first half of the 14th century, is one of the most striking to survive from the Middle Ages. Painted in rich colours embellished with gold and silver, with vitality and sometimes bizarre inventiveness of decoration, this manuscript is unlike virtually any other...' British Library).

My son took part in the 'Children's Battle' where they are trained in expert fighting with foam swords and in tricky moves which need to be accompanied by periodic cries of 'Choppy, choppy' or 'Stabby, stabby'. Elsewhere a display of Medieval Falconry was taking place. We stayed in our seats in the event field for the Grand Medieval Joust at 12pm where four knights, resplendent in armour, and heraldry, arrived with great pomp on their horses. The crowd were encouraged to support either the blue, gold, green or red knight and wave their flags. The microphoned scoring was professionally done with explanations given before the start. The excellent jester (who we have seen at other English Heritage events) wandered about echoing the scores to the crowd with hand gestures - his gesture for '1' was erm...interesting.

Unfortunately the heavens opened half way through the Joust, despite the compere imploring us that the English should not be so concerned by a bit of precipitation, after all we are not French! Nevertheless, we English rather wimpily scarpered to under the shelter of the nearby big tree, pushchairs, rugs and sandwiches all gathered up and bundled away. Later, we ended up in the obligatory gift tent, where actually there are some rather good things for children - this archer on a horse has taken pride of place on my son's shelf.

Our English Heritage membership was well worthwhile again - our family of four gaining entry for £5.50 instead of the £31 for non-members. We look forward to the next event.

Some excellent photos here of the day:
http://forum.greenwich.co.uk/threads/eltham-palace-medieval-joust.116/

ParksFest 2013 events around Eltham

 

 

 

For more information about these venues and about many other ParksFest events around the borough - see the ParksFest 2013 website.

Be a local tourist in Eltham: Sunday 24 March 2013

 

From the Royal Greenwich website:

'Be a Local Tourist Day' in Eltham offers a host of free activities from tours and historical adventures to musical entertainment at Eltham landmarks. Locals can explore the hidden gems on their doorsteps and visitors from further afield are welcome to discover new treasures in this historic town.
This is an annual event and will be held on Sunday 24 March this year. Highlights include:

• Eltham Palace
• the Bob Hope Theatre
• St John the Baptist Church
• the fire station
• The Lodge, home of the Royal Blackheath Golf Club
• Spring Wedding Fayre at the Well Hall Pleasaunce
• discounts and promotions at local shops

Download and print the Be a Local Tourist flyer to enjoy the offers. The flyer is also available from Greenwich Tourist Information Centre.

Further information

For more information contact the Tourist Information Centre on 0870 608 2000 or email tic@royalgreenwich.gov.uk.

Eltham's Young Voices at the O2

Thousands of primary school children sang their hearts out again at the O2 on 28 January. My daughter is one of the kids in this photo (blue section!) attending as part of her school choir. YouTube clip here of their fantastic pop medley. It's part of the Young Voices series of concerts.

More detailed write up of last year's performance here when a world record was broken for the largest backing choir in the world!

Eltham Lights Up 2012

Royal Greenwich have announced this year's event:

"Eltham will be transformed on Thursday 15 November as the Royal Borough of Greenwich hosts the 13th annual Eltham Lights Up Christmas Lights switch-on.

Eltham High Street will come alive with a range of entertainment, music and sports activities from 4.30pm onwards. Come along early to have fun and get a good view!

The Christmas lights switch-on at 6pm will be followed by a spectacular illuminated parade of lanterns created by hundreds of local children and their families. The parade will also feature giant structures and live music.

Eltham High Street will be closed to traffic between 4pm and 8pm.

The Eltham Centre will join in the celebrations with an official switch-on of its Christmas tree lights at 5pm and performances from Eltham Hill School Steel Band from 4.30 and Eltham Choral Society at 7.15pm. OJ's café will also be offering special discounts.

To add to the festive theme, there will be a Christmas market stall in Passey Place from 9am to 7.30pm, and Eltham Fire station will have an open event from 4pm to 7pm."

Read more here.

My write-up of previous years' events:
Eltham Lights Up 2011
Eltham Lights Up 2010
Eltham Lights up 2009

Local sport and National Apple Day tomorrow

News of two local nearby events tomorrow:

"The Plumstead Make Merry Association in conjunction with the Greenwich Rugby Club, will be holding a sporting spectacular on the afternoon of Sunday 14th October, from 12 noon to 3pm on Plumstead Common (London, SE18). Primarily this will consist of a Tug-of-War contest and a Three-Sided Football tournament, but we are also hoping to have some entertainment, and be serving food, the Rugby Club Pavilion will also be open for anyone requiring liquid refreshments......" more on the Plumstead Make Merry website..

and

National Apple Day at Woodlands Farm
on Sunday 14 October 2012, at  11:00am - 4:00pm
Woodlands Farm, 331 Shooters Hill, DA16 3RP

Free, but donations are welcome – all money raised helps to care for the animals. A great day out for all the family, including stalls, crafts, activities and more.All are welcome at the Woodlands Farm Trust Apple Day. Come and celebrate National Apple Day with a variety of activities including crafts, a treasure hunt and apple pressing to make delicious juice.There will be stalls selling local produce including honey, home-made jams and cakes. Live music will be provided by Skinners Rats.

Find out more on the Woodlands Farm trust website

Which secondary schools should Greenwich parents choose?

Every parent of a Year 6 child in the Borough of Royal Greenwich has one thing on their mind at the moment. 31 October is the deadline for submitting the CAF (Common application form) to our local council listing up to six secondary schools where we'd wish our child to be offered a place. Greenwich Admission booklet here, and the CAF here.

For the past year or so a feverish round of conversations, visits and soul-searching has been taking place. All culminating in the golden choice - 'the one' that you must get your child to attend, by any means necessary (believe me, this feels like it has all the intensity of Malcolm X...)

So what's the choice of secondary schools in Greenwich? Until very recently, most Greenwich parents muttered darkly about the dire performance of Greenwich secondary schools. Performance? Mostly this refers to the magic percentage of pupils which achieve 5 or more GCSEs including English and Maths. Most Greenwich secondary schools performed below the national average. However, worry not, we are told, since this appears to be changing.

The round of open days and evenings typically takes place in September and October each year. We visited a number of the schools a year early, in autumn 2011, and are now in the middle of revisiting them this autumn. Most secondary schools in Greenwich are on the cusp of 'great change' involving fantastic new buildings and/or new governance arrangements. Their GCSE results are creeping up, and to just above the national average in some cases. Here's a list of the main state secondary Greenwich schools with links to the Council summary:

• Blackheath Bluecoat CE
• Corelli College
• Eltham Hill School
• Harris Academy Greenwich
• St Paul's Academy
• St Ursula's Convent School
• Thomas Tallis School
• Woolwich Polytechnic School
• Charlton School
• Crown Woods College
• Greenwich Free School
• Plumstead Manor
• St Thomas More Catholic School
• The John Roan School
• University Technical College, Royal Greenwich

The big elephant in the room, or this post, so far is the matter of grammar schools. There are none, of course, in the borough of Greenwich which is why ambitious Greenwich parents try in their droves to secure grammar school places in the neighbouring boroughs of Bexley and Bromley and also in Kent. The percentage has been pretty high (I've seen it somewhere, can't find it now, double figure percentage).

To be eligible to apply for a Bexley Grammar school, children need to be deemed 'selective'. They achieve this by passing the 'eleven-plus' exam. On 18 and 19 October this year, thousands of children sat this Bexley test comprising of a 50 minute Maths paper and then a 50 minute 'Verbal reasoning' paper - results will be posted on 10 October.  It goes without saying that many children are heavily tutored to pass the 11+, not something which all parents can afford nor have the wherewith all to arrange so far in advance. I know that the majority of children in my daughter's class who sat the 11+ were all tutored. We decided at the last moment to enter our daughter for the 11+ and see what happens. In the three weeks before the test, after returning from languishing in France, we did some revision and some past papers (there's a whole industry in those out there...).

However, passing the 11+ is not the end of the matter. Demand for grammar schools by far outstrips the supply. And this is the rub. Out of the thousands taking the test only the' top 180' in the Bexley test are 'guaranteed' a grammar school place. I saw a figure for a very recent year: out of the 4,500 children who sat the Bexley test, 1294 were deemed selective. So being in the top 180 is no mean feat! You really have to be the cream. The remaining grammar places are allocated according to the school's policies which mainly comes down to catchment area.

All this causes some occasional angst amongst Bexley parents who resent the high numbers of 'out of borough' (the 'oobs') children with whom they have to compete to secure a school place, grammar or otherwise, in their own borough, resulting in petitions and representations to Bexley Council. Whilst I get the feeling that Bexley Council are sympathetic, they are hampered due to the 1989 'Greenwich ruling' which established that maintained schools may not give priority to children for the sole reason that they live within the LEA's administrative boundaries.
Many of the Bexley state schools and grammars are fairly close to the boroughs of Greenwich and Bromley and so children get in from there rather than particularly the north of Bexley Borough which is further away. I've seen a claim that the Harris Academy in Falconwood, Bexley, that has a 1.7mile catchment has 70% of its pupils from Greenwich, not sure how true that is.

Back to the Greenwich state secondary schools. Those we've visited include:

Crown Woods College - a school which, to be honest, in past decades has had a poor reputation. Now it has completely rebuilt, reorganised and rebranded itself. It is divided into three 'schools' on the same site of 90 pupils each, one of these schools being for the 'gifted and able'. We've visited a few times. It has a good vibe and the Headteacher gives a good talk. It's GCSE results are creeping up to. The gifted school is a curious piece of selectivity - "we're not allowed to call it a grammar school but..." we were told. Many Greenwich parents seem to be choosing the Delamere 'mini-school' as an alternative to going for Bexley grammars.

Thomas Tallis - again, a school which has a brand new spanking building. It has always had better results than most of the state non-religious Greenwich secondaries. It specialises in creativity and each time we've visited it's been fizzing with warmth and activity. The headteacher and senior team give a cracking, inspirational talk which is hard to resist, even with your best cynical hat on.

Harris Academy Falconwood - resurrected from a previously dire school and there's no doubting the massive uplift in performance. But, but...I have to say I failed to connect, so far, with it in any way.

We'll also be visiting the new Greenwich Free School out of curiosity, though it is probably the closest school to us - interesting piece on the 853 blog about that school.

One problem for parents this year is timing. Only 2011 school results are available officially. The 2012 results can only be gleaned from the individual schools themselves. They will not be published by the Department For Education until January 2013. I noticed the Greenwich Conservatives having been pushing the Council to publish these results. The Council have issued this information. If I had more time, I'd collate them here myself, but I haven't for now...

So good luck to every parent and child going through this stressful time at the moment.  Tell me which schools you are liking.