The Ferret: Petition for more youth funding fails to take off

Ferret can understand their angst - council spending on services for young people has fallen by hundreds of millions of pounds since 2010, while Labour estimates that more than 600 youth centres have closed over that time.

In light of this, you'd expect a petition calling on the government "to invest more money in youth charities and youth service providers" to receive plenty of backing from across the sector. However, a petition to that effect logged on Parliament's official petitions page failed to take off.

In the six months the petition was "live" on the parliament website, it received a grand total of 38 signatures. When the petition was closed on 1 August, it was 9,962 short of its 10,000 target.

Proof if proof were needed that the youth sector needs to get its act together and speak as one if it is to have any chance of stemming the relentless decline in spending and be taken seriously by policymakers.

Beano campaign under threat of library closures

To encourage children not to completely down tools during the summer holidays, East Sussex County Council has challenged them to read six books by the time they return to school in September.

This year's campaign has a Beano theme to mark the 80th anniversary of the classic children's comic. Young scamps aged four to 11 can collect a "Beanotown" map to record their reading journey, with participants earning stickers some emitting a mysterious smell - that would have pleased Dennis the Menace - for every book they read!

Bill Bentley, the council's lead member for communities and safety, said: "Each year, the Summer Reading Challenge captures the imagination of children across the county, encouraging them to visit their local library and keep reading during their summer break."

The fun campaign is set against a backdrop of severe cuts across the council as a result of a shortage in government funding - including plans to close seven of its 24 libraries to generate a saving of £653,000. While the closures are in the county's least deprived areas, where will children from deprived families go to read books and take part in initiatives such as this?

Call for Ofsted to be put in ‘special measures'

Ofsted's recent review of obesity, healthy eating and physical activity in schools certainly left a bitter taste in the mouth of the Soil Association.

Following the launch of the report, the association, which campaigns for plant-friendly food and farming, released a statement calling for the inspectorate to be placed in "special measures" for failing to follow the advice of its own expert advisory panel.

Apparently, despite the expert panel consistently backing a "whole-school approach" to encourage pupils to adopt healthy behaviours, the Ofsted report "urges schools to reduce their focus to classroom knowledge and skills alone".

This "disregard" of the evidence is "absurd" states the association, while the methodology used by Ofsted is "deeply flawed".

It rants: "Ofsted has flagrantly disregarded the advice of its own expert advisory panel and risks undermining the efforts that schools are making to support children to eat well at a time when the government is taking concerted action to tackle childhood obesity." Ouch!

It's the name of the game, Home Secretary

It is often said that politicians will tell people what they want to hear.

This was illustrated at a recent parliamentary reception held by Barnardo's, where new Home Secretary Sajid Javed was the guest speaker. After being introduced by the charity's chief executive Javed Khan, the Home Secretary complemented him on his "great name - one of the best I've ever heard".

Javed then quipped that following his promotion, "people have finally stopped confusing me for [London mayor] Sadiq Khan".

Don't give up the day job Home Secretary!

Brabin on problem of getting a foot in the door

How to get a foot in the door was the topic of a recent publicity event involving shadow early years minister Tracy Brabin. The Batley and Spen MP returned to her former Coronation Street stomping ground to highlight the increased difficulties young people from disadvantaged backgrounds face in forging a career in the arts and cultural industries. "Cuts have led to a systematic eradication of arts education in our schools, while chronic low pay and insecure work mean that those from lower income families have no hope of paying sky-high drama school fees or supporting their children through unpaid internships," said Brabin, who played the character Trisha Armstrong on the ITV soap in the mid-1990s. It will come as no surprise to many of you that studies have shown that two-thirds of Oscar winners and 42 per cent of Bafta winners went to public school. Never one to miss a canvassing opportunity, Brabin tried the door of her old on-screen home of No. 9 Coronation Street. Unfortunately, no one answered, proving that it is not just young people who struggle to get their foot in the door.