LEAP OF FAITH 2008 An evening of music and fun on Feb 29th seems to have gone off well with 50 or so staff, PTA and parents and money raised for the mini-bus. It's nice to see the new PTA doing something which parents responded well to. It seems too long ago since this was successful. Congratulations Kathy Fuller, Diane Dumont and Joanna Harling. Check out their next social events at http://www.harlowfieldshsa.co.uk What about the 30 strapping teenagers gathered outside the premises?

SUMMER FETE DAY   JULY 5TH 2008-- Be there and network. The only way parents are going to get to know more people is to go to these functions, and our functions, and exchange telephone numbers and details.

POSITIVE HANDLING TRAINING COURSE FOR STAFF Once Sue Davies and Mary Rushe had been given their  POLICE FORMAL WARNING for severely bruising a pupil it is good and only right to see that the staff will be doing this positive handling course, but unfortunately not  until the end of June. it also begs the question are   "all the staff already trained in Manual Handling?" as the school has said,  and how are they going to be dealing with pupils in the long summer term ahead before this positive handling course. The course is designed to "promote methods to de-escalate difficult and challenging situations and behaviour which works through communicating and negociation 98% of the time" We have been advocating this for a long time. Reward rather than punishment. But unfortunately one previous administration only used the punishment option, and the reward system was seen as left-wing trendy, when in fact all current national education advice was advocating positive methods. Shame on the school.

TRAINING DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN  (or is that Happy Days?) We are still getting lots of complaints from parents that they don't know when training days are going to be enough in advance ie. if they work. We think this because the school issues  very little information to parents anyway, and training days were usually tacked on the bottom of a newsletter. Although they are allowed to take up to 10 additional days, Harlowfields does seem to take up rather a lot of them compared with other schools. Considering that the school closes at 3.30 pm, unlike many other schools, you would think more of this training would go on after school wouldn't you?

OK THE PTA are having functions in the school, but we must say that between the hours of 9 and 3.30 the school is like Fort Knox. We do need the pupils to be kept safe, from outsiders and from 'escaping' but we can't help thinking that this is being used (abused) to prevent TRANSPARENCY so that nobody can see what is going on inside the school, coming in the light of the BLACK HOLES system when 2 rooms were used to imprison pupils as punishment 8  years ago it does tend to suggest that the school is harbouring a big secret (presumunably not on the Jersey scale) but you would think that the school would be going out of its way to have transparency, as indeed other Essex Special Needs Schools do. We heard of an EBD School that has unlocked doors and access

Training days added in case you didn't hear are Mon 30th June and Tues 1st July 2008