In his recent Budget, George Osborne set out plans to convert every primary and secondary school in the country into academies by 2020. Nationally the scale of the challenge is huge as 16,000 primary schools need to become Academies in the next five years. Over the last five years the Government has found it difficult […]

Kingston Council is currently consulting on closing 4 of the current 8 youth centres across the borough. The centres for that are likely to close are: The Devon Way Youth Centre in Chessington/Hook. It is home to five regular groups including disabled children groups. It also has a brand new sensory room (opened only a couple […]

Kingston’s International Youth Arts Festival, organised by Creative Youth, is one of the largest and most diverse youth events in the world and is now in its 8th year.  It showcases the best young talent nationally and internationally and provides a platform where emerging young artists aged 5-26 years old can reveal and share their skills and artistic […]

The Summer Reading Challenge run by Kingston Council Libraries encourages young children to keep up their reading skills during the long summer school holidays. This year’s theme was Record Breakers and children get a poster and stickers for taking part, with a medal at the end if they read or listen to 6 books. Nearly […]

The education of our children overrides political point scoring and Liberal Democrats are very pleased for parents and children that the Kingston Academy will be opening in September. What is lamentable, however, is the news the new Free School would not be able to open on time without help from the Local Authority to the […]

Kingston Council are consulting on the proposed admission arrangements for 2016 to 2017 for: community schools in-year admissions coordinated primary and secondary admissions schemes The proposed changes to the existing arrangements for community schools are: Sibling priority will only be given where an applicant has a sibling attending Reception to Year 6 at the same or linked infant and […]

The planning application for the expansion of Maple Infants school has been submitted to Kingston Council.  The application is for the “Erection of two storey classroom unit with connected link to existing school” for when the school expands to a permanent 3 form entry from September 2015. The full application, with plans, can be seen […]

On 1st July Kingston Councillors on the Children, Youth and Leisure committee unanimously agreed to the permanent expansion of Maple Infants and St Andrew’s & St Mark’s (SASM) Junior schools from 2 forms of entry to 3 forms.  This means from September 2015 Maple Infants will take 90 pupils into reception year and SASM will […]

A previous expansion plan for Maple Infant School and St Andrew’s and St Mark’s Junior School was withdrawn by Council officers due to concerns with the planning proposal. A new consultation to increase the number of children in each year from 60 to 90 has been launched.  The decision will now be taken at the […]

Express CIC is the brainchild of 2 Surbiton mothers. Express is a ‘not for profit’ community organisation based in Kingston with a vision to provide a community cafe/hub in the heart of the community with an autism friendly environment to include quiet areas and sensory areas with all facilities being fully accessible and provide opportunities […]