A group of Firstsite staff are leading a campaign to change the proposed staff restructure at the gallery, to enable the continuation of the positive changes that have begun to take place. We are calling for this rethink so we can protect jobs for people, particularly local people, instead of relying on volunteers to make up the majority of the customer facing staff. The cutbacks to the current staff structure will adversely affect the visitor experience and have a negative impact on the diverse and interesting programme of events, particularly within the learning department and the engagement of children and young people, currently one of the strongest areas Firstsite has with engaging with the community. The restructure addresses necessary financial savings that need to be made, but the proposed changes will result in short term savings, rather than creating a sustainable organisation that can generate income going forward. This will also perpetuate an unequal working and earning structure within the organisation. These changes will increase pressure on the remaining staff, many of whom already work outside of their job requirements, whilst offering a more than generous wage for the Director of the gallery.

Hello all We are a group of teachers at Lambeth College and would like to ask you to support us in our fight to keep our jobs and to encourage the government to save teachers’ jobs and to continue to provide affordable courses for the community. The government has already implemented cuts of 25% to FE colleges with plans to impose further cuts. We would like to ask you to support us in our campaign to stop the cuts to adult and further education. We would also like to ask you to supports us and urge the government to save teachers' jobs and to revise decisions that force teachers and students to bear the whole brunt of the FE cuts. Despite the disproportionately high salaries that senior managers receive, no senior management posts have been lost in the recent past or as a result of government cuts. In fact our principal has been awarded a 13% pay rise and his salary is now above 150k (he earns more than the prime minister) and a large number of senior managers get over 80k. It is strange how no one flinches at the fact that a college with a serious deficit and funding cuts of more than 25% on its budget can afford to pay management staff such salaries. An average lecturer gets 25 to 28k and has not had a pay rise for the past seven years. Teachers have to teach larger classes, some of them with more than 30 students in very precarious conditions, especially in the Brixton and Vauxhall centres. The equipment and facilities are decrepit and not fit for purpose. Management have now decided to make the equivalent of 8 full time posts in the ESOL department redundant. This is despite the fact that it lost 14 members of staff in July this year. The ESOL department recruited well over 2,000 students in September. It is the largest department of the college by far and there are still many students on the waiting list desperate for classes. Stand up to the cuts! Defend Adult Education! Sign the petition!

I teach and am conscious that we are forced to teach to tests. This inevitably stops me from being able to target students' actual needs. The assumption that children should be able to apply specific skills at a certain age and design tests informed by that assumption, worries me. Children do not progress at the same rate. The idea that one can predict a target for GCSE when a child is 11 is another example of over reliance on statistics with little concern for the child's sense of self esteem. An evaluation is necessary but we should not have a system which presumes all children can attain at the same rate and should do so.

Our library is more than just a place to get books - it provides a real focus for the community with shared interest groups, computer access, skills sharing across all ages - the list is endless and growing all the time. Most importantly it is a place for people to meet and be with others.

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.

There has been growing concern about the damaging impact of sugar on health - from the state of people's teeth to type-2 diabetes and obesity. To put this in context, a typical can of fizzy drink contains about nine teaspoons of sugar How many do you put in your tea/coffee?

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

It has never been clear since the dawn of the digital downloads era and we, the artists, often earn a very little income from selling a good amount of our music works which cost us a lot of time, love and money. It is important because the music industry is in crisis because of greedy companies like these (Deezer and others). Whilst I am a full time working musician, working hard and struggling to survive, these people and their employees which little have to do with music, make 20 times our profit just by addressing the products WE create, somewhere. ITunes for instance has a much fairer share of the profits with the artists who sell on it. I am a music producer, band leader of a successful Funk band, having sold 1715 copies of my first album on spotify and having earned 5.4€ from it sounds rather offensive. This is not the way the music business should go as they are killing the arts and the art of recording albums. I shall make my money back from the works I sell, not funding my music through borrowed money. We demand a fairer share of these streamed music deals, because in the past they've promised that they would give us more when they'd have more subscribers. Spotify accounts for 20 million active users and still pays artists around 0.002 pence per stream. This has to come to an end!

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.

Learning is THE most important of activities. Education costs money. Why should money be wasted to make private individuals (the directors of the agencies) rich?