Greenwich Time's take on the exam results

Well the council haven't managed to shift the sofa from the road or offer easy to get hold of cheap tickets for the King tut exhibition but they have been hard at it and got another issue of Greenwich Time out.

I'm sure there's a few great Greenwich Councilisms in there but what jumped out right away where the exam results that they published.

For the A-Levels they give an average for "Greenwich Borough", one for "National" and a row that compares Greenwich to that national.

Basically on A-Levels Greenwich did OK. The A to E pass rate is above the national average and has gone up this year compared to last. The more important A to C pass rate went up but only by less than half of the rise experienced nationally. The result of that being that we were 6.8% below the national average but we're now 7.7% below.

All told not bad though.

The GSCS results are printed a bit differently. There's no "National" row and no simple +/- figure for how far above or below that average we are. What there is, rather confusingly, is a row labelled "LA Average". I'm taking that to mean "Local Authority Average" and it seems to calculate out.

So why so open with the A Level results and so weasely with the GCSE ones?

Could it be to do with the big "Star Pupils" headline boast? Lot's of talk about how great Greenwich is doing compared to last year. They're quite proud to say that the increase in A to C grades was 3.7%, 6 times the national average.

However what they won't do is talk about how the grades themselves, not the increase, compare to the national average.

So how did we really do?

Well that doesn't seem to be a simple question. I can't seem to find a simple figure for the national average of kids getting 5 A to C grades. What I can find is the tougher average of those kids getting 5 A to Cs including English and maths, that's the standard Government measure now.

Greenwich Time doesn't use that measure, the measure that you'll see printed just about everywhere else. So why's that then? Why not use the the apparently standard measure? Why not let us easily see how we compare to the rest of the country? Is everything not quite so rosy if you do?

I've have found the official results for Greenwich, it's here.

The National Average for kids getting 5 A to Cs including English and Maths is 45.8%.

The Greenwich Average is 31.4% (see that here).

Looking back and comparing Greenwich Results with the national average also shows up a few interesting things.

2006: National 45.3%, Greenwich 31.3%
2005: National 44.3%, Greenwich 34%
2004: National 42.6%, Greenwich 29.5%
2003: National 41.9%, Greenwich 26.2%

So yes Greenwich is getting better compared to 2003 but we're way below average, not that you'd know it from the figures the council give you.

Someone got tickets for King Tut

Pat's emailed me again confirming that she did manage to get half price tickets for the King Tut exhibition. She had a bit of a story to tell too:

Good news is, I got two tickets. Had to jump through hoops to get them though and was 20 minutes late back to work, oops!
Complete shambles at the Dome with all being told to queue at one window and despite the precise timing on the email it did not open until the natives began to get very restless. I wasn't the only one there that was stressing about having to get back to work. It appeared that there was going to be some rather more important visitors to the area and they wanted a captive but disgruntled looking crowd for their press photo's.

Got home to find that I'd been sent an email to congratulate me on being one of the first 500 applicants.....timed at 10.30 this morning. We can't all sit in front of a computer all day in case Greenwich decide to respond!

The bit about them wanting a captive crowd is interesting, today's the day the Led Zeppelin concert was announced and it'll be at the O2. Maybe there was some announcement thing going on there and the management at the O2 didn't want the place to appear to be empty, which I'm pretty sure that it would be most lunchtimes.

That really would explain the very tight and silly time window, they wanted to overlap with whatever they had in mind.

It would also explain the rush, the gig might only have been confirmed the other day. Also remember that the exhibition doesn't open until November, over a month and a half away, if there was no other motive behind the half price tickets then they had plenty of time.

Over 120,000 tickets have already been sold for the exhibition (well so say the organisers). 500 half price ones is a tiny amount and a small price for them to pay in order to get some decent photos for whatever they were up to.

And what of Greenwich Council's role in this? They like to talk up about how great AEG have been and how "together" they've been a part of revitalising the O2/Dome.

It's beginning to look like the Council has been used and residents made to jump through hoops just for some PR exercise. Aren't Greenwich meant to be serving their residents rather than serving them up on a plate to big business? You would have thought that they could at least have haggled and got the tickets for free.

Great.

Still I'm sure the exhibition is going to be great, I'll definitely be going at some point.

Oh and the sofa and carpet are (or were) still out in the street. I'm really not in too great a mood with the powers that be right now.

Charlton's fly tipping is going up market!

I'm sure that there's some ancient tradition or charter that says that a London street must have a mattress dumped somewhere along it. Charlton's following on with it's take on Parisian pavement culture with a similar move to take the street rubbish up market too.

A sofa has appeared dumped on Floyd Road.

There's a bit more to this... At some point over the last week a load of carpet appeared there, I presume that someone's having some fitted. The binmen appear to have refused to take it, which is pretty understandable in my opinion. The sofa is now parked on top of the carpet.

I've got no idea if the same selfish idiots that dumped the carpet on the street are responsible for the sofa or if someone is trying to make someone else look guilty.

I have been proactive about this and contacted Cleansweep, the Council service that deals with this sort of thing. Fingers crossed it'll be dealt with soon, I really would like to be able to say something nice about the council after quite a few negative posts about them.

I do wonder what state it's going to be in in the morning...

Update on the King Tut Tickets

I've heard from Pat who's emailed the address given in the email from Greenwich Council.

There's been no reply, so what's Pat to do? Turn up and hope that he's within the first 500 that emailed and potentially waste a lunch hour?

If anyone has had any sort of response I'd really appreciate it if they can let me know...

Half price Tutankhamun tickets

Greenwich Council return with another cracking offer for Greenwich Card holders (cough).

GreenwichCard has teamed up with The O2 to offer GreenwichCard holders an exclusive opportunity to buy half price tickets for the opening week.

The first 500 cardholders to email tutrsvp@aegworldwide.co.uk will receive half price tickets when they bring their card to The O2 box office on Wednesday 12 September at 1pm. You must arrive no later than 1.30pm in order to purchase your half price tickets.

Full price adult tickets cost £15 and entry for children is £7.50.

Restrictions apply:
1) offer only good for opening week tickets for valid GCH carriers
2) offer cannot be combined with any other offer
3) only cardholders that have RSVP'd for the offer and arrive in person on 12 September between 1pm and 1.30pm are eligible.

For more information visit http://www.visitlondon.com/tut

OK so you've got two days notice to hit a half hour window at the O2.

Who exactly is this offer aimed at? Surely I'm not alone in thinking that you've got to jump through some real hoops to get this deal. I'm sure that many people won't be able to get to the O2 to claim it.

The exhibition doesn't open until November, you'd have thought that either some more notice or a bigger time slot could have been arranged.

Anyhow if you can jump those hoops that the Council have put up then get down to the O2 and get some of those cheap tickets.

Well Hall Pleasaunce

As I've already said I tried to go to Eltham Palace yesterday. Well to be precise I did go to Eltham Palace, it just wasn't open.

So I made a plan B and got back on the road. Plan B required the locating and purchasing of some food, so we stopped on the way from Eltham to the A2 when we saw a Co-Op.

Over the road was a little park that looked interesting, it was Well Hall Pleasaunce and it was very interesting.

There used to be a manor house there that was home to the daughter of Thomas Moore amongst others. Later still E. Nesbit, the author of the Railway Children amongst others, lived in a house built on the site of the manor house.

That later house has now been demolished as well. What's left however is a rather interesting moat and next to is a barn that dates back to the 16th Century. The barn is now apparently a pub and while we were there a Wedding was going on. The park around the barn and moat all seemed rather attractive and pleasant to be in while we had our lunch.

We only had time for a brief stop as Plan B needed seeing to but I think we'll go back with a proper picnic and explore the place properly.

The park apparently has an active group of supporters, they have a web site here that has some more information about the park and what they do.

My camera decided that it's batteries were flat but I did manage to get a couple of photos out of it.

All things told a very pleasant surprise.

The gardens where we had our lunch.
The 16th Century Barn.

Eltham Palace...

...is closed on Saturdays.

I know that now. I didn't know it when I went there today.

The opening hours are:

1 Apr-31 Oct
10am-5pm Mon, Tue, Wed, & Sun.

1 Nov-23 Dec
11am-4pm Mon, Tue, Wed, & Sun.

Closed 24 Dec-2 Feb

3 Feb-20 Mar
11am-4pm Mon, Tue, Wed, & Sun.

However I did find a nice surprise not too far away, more on that later.