Our Community Our Schools

A roundup of recent activity from Our Community Our Schools... View this email in your browser Our Community Our Schools:  January bulletin - Two meetings this week Dear all, A belated Happy New Year to all our supporters from OCOS. Here’s a quick round up featuring two important meetings coming up this week:   The campaign for compulsory SRE: Saturday 24 January The OCOS Charter for Education calls for a rounded education for all children as well as for schools to be safe places where our children are free from bullying and sexual harassment. We at OCOS believe that unbiased, fact based, SRE (sex and relationship education) is crucial if we are to achieve that aim. We believe that SRE shouldn't just be about the mechanics of where babies come from. We believe it should also address issues such as the importance of consent in sexual relationships, what abusive relationships are, and it should challenge sexist and homophobic stereotypes and bullying. Our Community Our Schools welcomes the Our Bodies, Our Future conferenceat Frederick Bremer school on 24th January and we would encourage the many local parents who support our campaign to attend. In advance of the conference, we are delighted to welcome the keynote speaker, Laura Bates, as a guest blogger for OCOS on the campaign for compulsory SRE.  Laura is founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, a collection of over 80,000 women and girls' daily experiences of gender inequality. She writes regularly for the Guardian, Independent, Red magazine, Grazia etc. She is Patron of SARSAS (Somerset and Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support, formerly Bristol Rape Crisis). She works regularly with schools, universities and businesses and collaborated closely with the British Transport Police on Project Guardian, which has increased the reporting of sexual offences on public transport in London by 25% and the detection of offenders by 32%. Read her guest blog for OCOS here.. Another Education is Possible: Friday 23 January Our Community, Our Schools will be represented at a public meeting on the state, and future, of education called by Waltham Forest Left Unity this Friday, 23rd January at 7.30pm at the Epicentre, 41 West Street, Leytonstone, E11 4LJ. Other speakers include Richard Hatcher from the Birmingham Campaign for State Education, Steve White, Secretary of Walthan Forest NUT and Simone Aspis from the Alliance for Inclusive Education. More details here... And finally, Our Schools in focus.. For those who missed it first time round, a reminder to read our popular blog from late last year on one of our local community schools, Kelmscott School here.. All the best from everyone at OCOS. All the best Jonathan White Scarlet Harris Alison Emmett Kiri Tunks Mark Holding Mickey Dean Tom Davies and everyone else at OCOS   Copyright © 2015 Our Community Our Schools, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have supported our campaign in the past Our mailing address is: Our Community Our Schools Waltham Forest London, Walthamstow E17 United Kingdom Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences