A pleasant trip to March, with the roof down, gave me a chance to reflect on all that I had seen and heard this week on my trips out.

So far my impression is of dedicated, motivated and modern thinking staff who are up for the challenges that lay ahead.  I guess the cliche of council “jobs worths” is just that, a cliche that is wide of the mark. I know some people love to continue to try and keep that image alive but it is so not true.

Burrowmoor Primary school is another example of a well run  establishment dedicated to the local children. A happy place with lots of space both indoors and outside and activities going on all over the place. I bet not a single child has ever said the are “bored” in this school. I was able to get a much better understanding of the issues facing the families in Fenland. Interestingly, it seems that part of the reason that children do  not aspire to higher education is that they can all find work, with or without a GCSE. There is also a strong community spirit that acts against children going “away” to university. Perhaps more distance learning might be the answer. More thinking out loud.

I was able to share some ideas with the head and we explored some of the issues facing the school. Interestingly, the head echoed my positive thoughts on the  children’s locality team which was a different one to the one I met. Two locality teams and two thumbs up, sounds like they are meeting a need effectively.