23/01/2017 South Today - Oxford

Coming up: funding cuts for nearly half of schools in Oxfordshire

Also - as Oxford Children's Hospital celebrates its 10th anniversary,

there's a new appeal to help future patients.

Dense fog patches will reduce visibility tonight and tomorrow, I

will have the details later. It's been revealed nearly half

of Oxfordshire's schools are going to lose money under

new government plans. The way education is funded is being

looked at across the country - to deal with unfairness

in the system. But campaigners in Oxfordshire say

some schools could be worse off It's the ultimate

political football. Oxfordshire schools have

traditionally been in the lower half of the league when it

comes to school funding. Last year, the government

promised to tackle Hopes were raised that

schools here would be in for a big win, but actually nearly

half of schools are going to lose 133 schools will get

more funding, by 0.8% for Oxfordshire schools.

That's below inflation. And when the new

formula was revealed, Overall I think

it's horrendous, I think we are facing an unsustainable

cut to our budgets. And for struggling smaller schools,

the consequences are very serious. but I don't just see how that

can work in practice. And I think there will

be a huge political backlash Badgemore Primary School

in Henley will lose Headteacher Jackie Steele says that

could mean losing a member of staff. It's going to be even harder

to achieve, you know, the results and the standards

that we are being expected to achieve,

the bar is being raised ever higher, and we are being stretched ever

further, and I think that's a really big

ask of school leaders. At the other end of the funding

league table, which is getting a 2.8%

boost under the new formula, but headteacher Lynn Knapp says that

money will really only When we were looking

at going to deficit, we were actually, we can't employee any

extra staff, we may even have to So, by having either

a standstill figure or at least an increase we are just

protecting the staff we've got. The Department for Education insists

the new formula will mean an end to the postcode lottery in

school funding, but in Oxfordshire fears remained that for some schools

losing out, it could be game over. More than 40% of junior doctors

have admitted to falling asleep at the wheel,

on their way home. The BBC's Inside Out

programme has investigated the impact of night shifts,

by putting a junior doctor from Oxford through a driving

simulator, at the end After just 19 minutes,

on the virtual motorway in Berkshire, she started having

so called micro-sleeps. Fatigue is a huge road safety

problem. Our own perception of our fatigue level tends to be behind

reality and by the time we have realised it, we could already have

made a serious mistake that could have led to a collision.

After a nine-month delay, a new unit to provide urgent medical

support at the Townlands Hospital in Henley has now opened.

Building work is finally complete on the Rapid Access Care Unit.

It's part of the ?10 million hospital project.

The Oxford Children's Hospital is celebrating its 10th anniversary

and is marking the milestone with a new fundraising effort.

It provides some of the most specialist care in the UK.

A leading brain surgeon has helped hundreds of young people.

My name is Jay Jayamohan, and I'm a paediatric neurosurgeon

at the Oxford Children's Hospital here in the John Radcliffe Hospital.

We start at about 7.45 and we do a handover

..a patient who was diagnosed with spina bifida.

When he was born he was taken straight into intensive care, he had

his spine closed at two days old, he had his first shunt put in at

one-week-old, and then when he was two weeks old we went home.

So he's had quite a few operations

What we're going to need to do is get him seen by

physiotherapists, community paediatricians.

Sometimes, you have to give bad news to families.

It is possible and probable that he'll

But as long as he continues to make progress then we just keep going.

Being able to make them understand that actually this is the best way

forward and this is something that has to be done requires a lot of

Come on, big lad! He's heavy.

Having children has certainly has impacted

It's no good if you get so overwhelmed that

you can't do the operation, so you have to be

able to say yes, this is a really big deal

but that actually we've got to get on with it

and do it in a calm and controlled manner.

Leighton is a young boy who had problems

with fluid build-up on his brain

for which he had a telescopic operation.

Amy got a phone call from the hospital to say

I put his life in the hands of Mr Jayamohan

and I've never been more happy at the decision I've

Since then everything has just gone uphill.

Mr Jayamohan rings Amy just out of the blue,

We struck gold with our consultant, he's amazing.

I get to come in every day and do operations on sick babies and

make them better, and for those that I can't make better I make what time

they have as enjoyable for them and their families as possible.

Tomorrow, we'll meet four-year-old Alan Moulder from Banbury

who received life-saving treatment for cancer at the Oxford

There's also coverage on the BBC Radio Oxford breakfast show.

The international trade secretary Dr Liam Fox has been shown around

Banbury's engineering firm, Pro Drive.

He visited the motorsport company as the government launched

It's promising to invest in science and support new businesses

as part of plans to improve the post-Brexit UK economy.

A choir in Oxford has completed a music marathon to raise money

St Mary Magdalen dates back to the Saxon times.

The choir there has now sung the complete Latin

We need a fairly large sum of money, because the roof

The problem mainly is that part of the building is

medieval and part is Victorian and where things have been joined

together, then the lead is splitting or the guttering is giving way,

slates are loose, and of course, being a listed building, then

everything has to be specially chosen and specially

arranged, and we need to keep this old lady,

She needs a new hat, I suppose you might say.

It's quite a challenge to sing so much music continuously, which is

why we have a team of people so we're doing it in shifts.

I've got three other members of my family singing

We're doing it partly to raise awareness

but also to have a chance to sing this music and have a sense of how

it fits together and how it fits into the history of the church and

It has been a pretty foggy start to the week and we hold

onto the foggy conditions both tonight and tomorrow

but through the week, the fog will start to clear

and we'll see some clearer conditions with drier air

Cold at times but mainly dry this week.

A lot of fog overnight tonight which may

be dense in places and temperatures will fall away into minus figures.

In the countryside we could see lows of minus six Celsius.

So, a bitterly cold start to the day tomorrow,

that freezing fog may linger through much of the day.

But we're hopeful that it will start to break

in places to allow for some sunny spells but the cloud may linger here

and there with the fog lifting into low cloud and temperatures

reaching a high of four to six Celsius, so it

Tomorrow night, further foggy conditions are

There will be a good deal of cloud in the early hours of

A frost is also likely where we have the clearing

skies and temperatures not as low as tonight, dropping to around

So a cold, potentially frosty and foggy start to the day on

Wednesday, we're more likely to see any brightness the

further west you are with more cloud for eastern areas and temperatures

Another cold day with all that cloud.

Thursday will see some lovely sunny conditions although the big

difference is, we'll draw in the air from

the continent and Europe at the

moment is very cold indeed and so that

south easterly breeze will

bring some colder air towards us through Thursday.

Friday, outbreaks of rain are a possibility here and there

As we look ahead to the weekend, it will

stay mainly dry and it will be a little less

cold than this week with

temperatures up into high single figures and there will be some

For the weekend we will have dry weather with sunny spells and it

will be a little bit milder. Good evening. We are continuing to

see huge righty in the weather. Getting the detail right is proving

to be a challenge. This was in Pembrokeshire and other parts of the

UK were gloomy throughout the day. The fog is thickening up right now.