Over the past few weeks I have visited several local primary schools in Lewisham Deptford. The first of these was to St. Mary’s School in Lewisham where I was given a tour around the school, sat in on Friday worship and answered lots of questions from members of school council.

I was then presented with a petition signed by students to make the pedestrian crossing outside their school more visible and safer for the school community. I will be raising this directly with Transport for London.

I then went along to Tidemill School, where I was joined by a representative from the Arts Council to see all the work the school have been doing to encourage participation in the creative arts.

I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the end-of-year musical, see a performance from Tidemill’s fantastic all-female dance troop and have a tour of the school’s very own art gallery. I was particularly impressed by their ‘Deptford is..’ collage project and would love to be able to snag a print for my office.

To round off my visit I sat down and chatted to school council about things that worried them locally, particularly their safety in the area around the school. I’m going to be working with them on this going forward, so watch this space!

My most recent visit was to St. James Hatcham last Friday. I was treated to some fantastic singing by the school choir, who had managed to learn a song in Latin after just two practises, a tour of the school by four lovely students and a question and answer session over brunch.

By far the most popular question topic was climate change and our local environment. It was great to see how environmentally conscious all of the students were, and I’ve encouraged them to write to me with any more concerns that I can hopefully raise in Parliament in the future.