Welcome back dear fellow, exasperated parents to what seems NORMAL

Welcome to Tim, who seems to be doing lots of good things, so far, and is making lots of encouraging noises. This is what we would expect, but many of us were used to being systematically bullied and it will take a time for us to regain sensible trust and relationships.

Many of the staff who supported B.T.'s regime are still there and it will take a time to remove them and alter all their bad educational practices

First step to normality - A 20th Anniversary Party of Shared Care IN THE SCHOOL ON SUNDAY 12th September AFTERNOON!!!!!. This must be the first time in 5 years that the school has been open to an outside org. and of benefit to parents. We want and hope that there is more of this. We want social meetings of parents ,outside of school hours, which is practical, so that we can get to know each other and swap useful information, and give each other support - like every other Special School in the country, (apart from a new one in Peterborough no doubt) It's strange, but if you treat people well they almost certainly respond well back, and the interaction results in more than either side can have hoped for. Social Science research has shown that CO-OPERATION is the way society works best

Tim has also been holding out olive branches to some very badly treated parents Good on yer.

We are still slightly apprehensive about how much abnormal power the LEA will be exercising over this school, particularly as other parts of Essex are about to get amalgamated in the same way it happened in Harlow. We hope to be advising parents at these other schools of the way it was done at Harlow Fields - namely exclusion of parents and outside professionals - contacts and feelers are going out now, advise on Web-site to circumnavigate lack of normal contact.

It is with a wry smile that we note that Bill Ramell M.P. after wrestling with the dictatorial problems of Harlowfields for many years, has now taken on the easier assignment of the hard line communists of North Korea, and their nuclear weapons! Good luck Bill. Perhaps you should meet Tim sometime?

Finally this time I am reminded of an article I read about a Cheryl Hazell of North Weald who had to move to Chelmsford to get her son to Hayward School. The boy is Autistic and she realised that modern thinking about autistic education is that in an autistic unit the children meet each others boundaries so they learn from their peers, and they learn differently from other children. So there is a very strong case for separate autistic classes, which was something the old Harlow Fields regime seemed incapable of accepting. A child, who was at the school a while ago was socially isolated, because the school thought he was dangerous, which didn't help his socialization, in fact was probably extremely detrimental to him, however all that specialised education improved him academically, because of the different teaching methods used

Finally, finally, our last ditch effort to bring BT to account is still proceeding slowly. We can't let this one go, particularly if she's gone to another school. WATCH THIS SPACE. As we discussed at the meeting a while back, this is the big one, and we don't know why we didn't try it sooner

I feel pretty oh so pretty, I feel pretty and witty and light..............