New website for parental advice and support

Thanks to a local parent, there’s a new website for local parents, the Hernhill Parent Support Advisor, offering the following services:

• helping parents to understand school policy & procedure
• helping parents understand the SEN framework
• putting parents in touch with the right professional support services
• going to meetings with the school and taking notes / providing support

The website provides links to useful resources, leaflets and guidance for parents on an number of issues including local services in Kent, and looks set to become an important and valuable resource in itself

Visit the new website here, or contact the advisor here.

A permanent link to the new site is now located in the ‘Local links’ section on the lower-right-hand side of this website. Please show your support for this new resources by ‘Liking’ it on Facebook, and spread the word!

Local loan fund to support enterprise in Swale

As indicated in this month’s copy of the ‘Hernhill News,’ Swale’s Head of Community Services is considering the creation of a Local Loan Fund to support voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors in the local area.

Applications to join need to be submitted by Friday 2 March.

Loans will only be granted to organisations, not individuals.

Interested parties can obtain details from the Clerk, Terry Smart: details in the newsletter which will be online here (although not as yet updated since December, previous copies of the newsletter also contain the details).

Looking to the community’s future

There’s a burgeoning teenage sector of our community looming in the next few years.

There are many children in the village, curently aged between 5 – 9 years, who in about four years’ time will begin to evolve into an ever-growing teenaged community.

As some of the village have been observing in recent weeks, as a rural locality, it’s going to become an important issue, how we can engage this part of our community when it begins to emerge.  With limited access to places like Canterbury and Faversham – the local bus service is sporadic – for recreational activities, such as cinemas, cafes, shops and sports and social facilities, at some point, the community will need to assess how it will entertain and occupy them, what recreational and social facilities we can offer.

It’s time to start planning ahead, to make sure that, when this sector of the community emerges, there are means for them to grow and be engaged by their locality. Time to think ahead…

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New feature: local weather 3-day forecast

We’ve added a new Widget to the Forum: a three-day local weather forecast, fed live from the BBC weather website.

Located in the right-hand column, this widget will continuously draw the latest weather updates for the ensuing three-day period for this area from the BBC and drop it right here for us.

Now you can look ahead and see what’s coming: helping you take advantage of the current, unusually high temperatures and know when to visit the beach or get out and about in the coutryside!

The Hernhill Forum: keeping you up-to-date.

Think Green! New initiative for schools

A recent article in The Guardian shows research evidence that schoolchildren are becoming increasingly concerned with learning about the environment in lessons.

Just over one thousand children between 7-14 were surveyed, with 82% saying learning about environmental issues was important to them, including wildllife, nature, and where their food originates from.

The findings by the Co-operative have been published as it launches its Green Schools Revolution programme, in which schools who have signed up to the programme can access a wealth of resources and activities, including the chance to visit Cop-operative farms to learn about renewable energy and food production.

Click the button!

You can visit the Green Schools Revolution website here: think about it for your school too!

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Suffolk school embraces dance and drama to improve standards

As reported in an article in The Independent last week, a Suffolk school has forged links with a local dance organisation; pupils go for weekly dance lessons and attend productions at the DanceEast centre.

DanceEast

The move has engaged both girls and boys at the school, as well as parents, who go to productions with their children, with a real sense that the parents are engaging with their children’s education once more. Children are more confident, develop critical thinking as they write reviews of the productions they visit, and have a more positive view of their schooling experience.

With the arts increasingly being sidelined in school curriculum delivery, this step is a positive one; the school’s recent inspection report noticed an imnprovement in achievement and higher standards since the project began.

Speaking and listening skills, in particular, have been improved by developing pupils’ arguments about what they have seen when they act as dance critics. And those speaking and listening skills, according to the recently published review of primary-school national-curriculum assessment carried out by Lord Bew’s inquiry team, are essential to improve reading and writing standards.

Read the full article here.

Half a year old…

With the Forum now reaching six months old, now seems a useful time to reflect on all that’s gone on (both on- and off-line!) over the past six months.

We’ve had two Saturday Singing Workshops; a village party; a guided tour of Bossenden Wood; the launch of the Exchange Cafe after school on Fridays; a digital newsletter; the Supper Club; an article covering the Exchange Cafe appearing in the Faversham News; the Exchange Cafe flourishing to include outdoor summer activities such as tennis and table-tennis sessions; and the creation of ‘Open Dawes’ to facilitate further events and activities.

Alongside all the other events in and around the village, including the Village Fete, and the looming prospect of Hernhill Open Gardens and the Brenda Irving Charity Dressage event, the community is a dynamic place to be!

In the next few weeks, we’ve a trip to Wildwood, a family walk and picnic, the public launching of Open Dawes, ’Music for a Summer’s Day,’ a concert of popular operatic and oratorio, showtunes and music theatre repertoire, and a sign language workshop.

Not bad for something that’s only six months old! Thanks, of course, to everyone who has been a part of it all, and to you, Dear Reader, for visiting, commenting on and sharing articles, and making the Forum a vibrant part of the community’s communicative culture.

There’ll be a lot more to come in the next six months as well; keep an eye on the Forum to find out all that’s happening…Keep up!

Parents with Attitude

for a grown-up discussion.

Parents With Attitude is a website for parents who want to engage in an adult debate about the issues affecting their lives, and the world that they live in. Join in the debte on the Parents’ Forum blog.

http://www.parentswithattitude.com/

Parents’ Forum

The Parents forum is an initiative aimed at parents and other individuals who are critical of the knee jerk reaction to most domestic issues that it is the parents or family to blame.

The forum started in October 2006 and so far discussions have looked at: is modern society dangerous for children?, the obsession with healthy eating, breast feeding and what is positive or negative about the family today.

http://www.parentswithattitude.com/parentsforum/