The Big Day - Which School Next?
Yesterday was 'the big day' for local year six children to find out by which secondary school they had been accepted. A tough day for kids - amongst the jubilation of many, there were bound to be tears from those who hadn't got the place they wanted.

It doesn't affect my family yet but my heart went out to others. There was the crazy logic of a child living a stone's throw from a school not being accepted, but another child living many miles away from the same school, getting accepted even though it was second choice. So both children will have to travel miles each day to school, whereas one would have been able to walk.

I don't want to sound too old but.... in my day it was much simpler and there was less heart ache and stress for the children because most kids went to the nearest school. Easy peasy - hopefully a good mix of children, who lived in the local area.

Going to the nearest school meant we could almost all walk to school, there was minimal traffic congestion and lower costs of travel, eg bus. Okay, so there are some benefits to having a 'choice' but the disadvantages of the current scheme are massive in terms of increased pollution and congestion for society and are detrimental to the health and well-being of our children.

On the Stage at Stratford Upon Avon

Well it wasn't actually Shakespeare... but on Saturday my kids and I took to the stage at the annual Consumer Co-operative Conference in Stratford this weekend.

We were there to convince lots of lovely people who are involved in co-operative retail businesses across the UK that there is an important role for businesses to play in supporting schools and helping get more kids walking safely to school.

It started with a fashion-show - Dan, Matthew and Julia all kitted out in their high vis BrightKidz waistcoats and fleece, carrying bags and umbrella proudly walked on to the stage to a grand applause.... well that is a bit different from Powerpoint isn't it (which I'm not all that good at)?

I told them about Park & Stride (getting parents to park well away from school - possibly in a supermarket car-park - see the connection with the Co-op!).

Finally I introduced many of them to the Walking Bus concept (some already knew, as The Co-operative Group has already started to provide many UK schools with Walking Bus resources - details about that are on our e-newsletter so contact us if you want to subscribe).

There's nothing like a live demonstration, so my three kids took the role of the adult 'conductors' and led 10 volunteer 'children' from the audience around the conference hall in a Walking Bus. I told my kids to award stickers to all the grown ups who walked nicely.... which caused a great deal of amusement. I think my kids felt like the von Trapp children after that experience!

Anyway, I must use my blog for a quick plug of Co-operative and Community Finance (lenders for social purpose) as they are the nice people who lend us money when we need it (they support 'non-profit distributing', community enterprises like ours). They had invited us to speak to show the Co-op community an example of an organisation they invest in.... and we are a very visual example!