Children are bombarded with sensory stimulation from video games, mobile phones TV and computers almost 24 hours a day. Add to that the pressure of everyday life ....tests , changes in the family make up, poverty, and overworked parents! Combine these factors with the already difficult naturally occurring stages a child goes through and we are heading for many more generations of depressed over pressured young people and adults. What coping strategies do our children have to counteract all this bombardment and retain their individual Humanness in a virtual world .... We need to teach them how to find a stillness amidst all of the business. What coping strategies are we providing to prevent more generations of depressed over pressured young people and adults ???????

We are a group of Hackney residents and parents of children at Colvestone Primary School. Without consulting the Education Department, and in the face of 70 objections from local people, Hackney Council’s Planning Committee has approved a development proposal that will significantly overshadow the nursery school next door. More than 30 children every year, and for generations to come, will be robbed of sunlight in the outdoor space of the nursery so that a developer can build “light-filled” private studio flats above the proposed ground floor and basement café. We are outraged by this decision. We expect the Mayor to put the education, health and well-being of the children first. • We have an independent expert review of the proposal which concludes that the building would cause “an increase of three to four times the existing levels of overshadowing” • A local resident, Judith Watt, has launched a legal challenge to the Council’s planning decision • We are urging the Council to act now to enforce historic property covenants that protect sunlight to the school's land. Please, Mayor, do the right thing.

The pressures faced by children and teenagers now are more harsh than ever. The pressure to succeed in a failing school system, the pressure to get the best GCSE and ALEVELS, family pressures, and children who have an intrinsic mental health concern, all these pressures have increased, and the support services that would enable a child to access support have not only stayed static, but in many cases have reduced in size. Last year 800 children aged 11 and under needed treatment in a and e for injuries caused by self harm, each week there is news of another teen suicide, or an autistic child that cannot receive access to a vital service, this needs to change, and fast, before a whole generation is lost. This vital service can no longer be a Cinderella service.

This is important to copious amounts of people and due to this change all around Britain schools this has made the lives of ks4 students in a very diffucult position

The scoring of children in their first weeks on entry to their new schools: -Is Damaging for children and inappropriate practice at an important transition time -Will undermine the current methods of assessment and practice used in early years settings -Will not improve the quality of schools -Is not a reliable source of data -Will lead to a further formalisation of learning in the early years and downgrading of play -Transfers funding from school budgets to private companies -Prevents the local education authority from having an active role in overviewing and monitoring assessments in the early years across the county and places this role directly into the hands of the private assessment providers and the DFE. We call on the County Council to write to the Secretary of State for Education calling for the removal of Baseline Assessment and the retention of the existing Early Years Foundation Stage Profile in our schools. We also call on the County Council to support any school that chooses not to implement the Baseline assessment.

All children deserve the right to reach their full potential. Education should be fully accessible to all, not just those who are capable of helping schools reach target figures .

As above it will mean higher payments for students and could put off future students attending uni. Is it not illegal to change the terms and conditions of a loan after it has been taken out?

Sign this petition to ensure the public an opportunity to respond to these outrageous proposals and a full enquiry into how the council have been allowed to enforce gagging orders on council employees to prevent them from speaking out. Our children's future is at stake. I am one of many parents in the area with a child who has additional needs. The proposal to remove support within schools affects all children. There maybe as many as 5 disruptive children in a class of 22 with the teacher expecting to deliver the curriculum without any assistance. The whole system will collapse. And this is just the BEGINNING of the cuts.

Classes are being closed without consultation or preparation. This is affecting non exam classes where adult learners are developing skills and social contacts that are vital to their well being.

Hackney has its eyes on growing land values in this fast gentrifying London borough. It plans to demolish three primary schools and carve up the plots, building private homes for sale on designated education land - selling off the playgrounds and digging up the trees to build luxury flats. The new schools will be rebuilt on a fraction of the original sites, some with twice as many pupils squeezed in. The number of private luxury flats crammed in doesn’t leave room for much else. At the first proposed school, the play spaces are on the roof, in permanent shadow of the towers. The residents will be able to look right down on top of the school. As for the classrooms, there aren’t many windows. The corridors are internal, artificially lit rat-runs. The first proposed school is opposite a park, but south-facing, high-rise residential towers will block all the natural daylight. Ironically, residential towers on this site were demolished 20 years ago as a sign of progress. My son’s current school, Nightingale Primary, is not perfect. But it has dignity as a school, and room to play: There’s a grassy hill with enough bushes and trees for a game of hide and seek, plus a bee hive, kitchen garden, football pitch and three surfaced play areas, one for nursery, one for reception and one for everyone else. All of this will be sold off to build flats that likely will be sold for 'investment' - it may be that no one actually even lives there. Children spend 30 per cent of their life in school, with profound effects on their health and development. A 2007 Danish study showed that fresh air ventilation rates are linked to pupil performance. In a study of 2,111 Spanish schoolchildren, time spent in (not near) green spaces reduced behavioural and emotional problems, reducing hyperactivity and improving ADHD scores. A six-year American study on 905 Massachusetts elementary schools found pupils in schools with more ‘greenness’ scored higher in standardised tests. Chinese scientists discovered a 23 per cent reduction in shortsightedness among children who spend an additional 40 minutes in the sun. In a wealthy city such as London, there is no excuse for such poor stewardship of a land asset that, once sold, will be gone forever. With the shortage of school places, we will need education land to build on. We once battery-farmed hens until it was found to be too cruel. Are we going to battery-farm our children? Please help us stop the Hackney Learning Trust.

On 14th September the Vice Chancellor and Student Services Director at the Open University announced plans to close seven English regional centres in Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Gateshead and London. They claim this is with the aim of putting students first and giving them a better support services experience. 500 highly qualified, experienced and dedicated staff members stand to lose their jobs or face having to compete to retain their posts at another location with all the disruption this causes. Worst of all is that their academic and student support expertise would be lost. The Open University has already closed one regional centre and transferred student services from a regional to a faculty based model. This already means that students who once could have all their support needs met in one team might now have to contact as many as four separate teams for this. Increasing reliance on online resources also leaves students floundering when they could previously speak to a student support expert as a first resort. The plans to close offices and jettison staff teams with as much as 190 years of academic and student support experience among them, for new, inexperienced staff working in call centre conditions are only likely to further reduce the quality of service students can expect

There are so many unfortunate families out there who struggle to finance healthy, nutritious meals for their children let alone finance any food at all. A daily free school dinner could be the difference between a child surviving and starving to death. Just think how much pressure this will take off the parent who is struggling, worrying, preying for a bit of help, All children deserve a healthy, nutritious diet not just the smaller generation or children who come from more fortunate back grounds. We have homeless shelters and open kitchens for adults and such like so why shouldn't we be giving back to the children too? Children are vulnerable and should not be taken for granted they deserve the option!