For safety’s sake, think about the pupils...

THE FRIDAY THING: A FINAL plea from me to disregard the plan to build a new school in Diggle rather than on the site of the present, excellent school.

My concern about the choice of school is simply that I, along with many parents across the borough, are deeply concerned about the safety issues around a new school at Diggle.

Parents of children who don’t live in Diggle should take a keen interest at the lack of safety features at the site. There are legitimate road safety issues that could well lead to accidents and disasters as crowds of school children and parents head down the narrow road to the new building.

PLEASE put safety first. The prospect of an army of children making their way down a busy road with cars, buses, waggons, vans and lorries and with a road that has only one side with the luxury of a narrow pavement, is a potential disaster waiting to happen.

This is not scaremongering but a sense of a real feeling that children could be injured or worse. An accident waiting to happen? For all concerned I sincerely hope not.



WHAT’S AFOOT? School shoes and a doggedly determined head dictating what shoes parents should buy and pupils should wear whether they like them or not.

As if the Saddleworth School head didn’t have enough on his plate running a highly-regarded school without assuming the role of shoe dictator.

It’s not as if the shoes parents have bought for their children are multi-coloured clown shoes with a stand-on horn in the toe. Most parents choose shoes that are entirely appropriate, quite expensive and, most importantly, the sort pupils want to wear.

Quite why head teacher Matthew Milburn didn’t approve of shoes bought by parents and much admired by pupils isn;t easy to fathom. Surely running a school with its many important facets for pupils, parents and staff alike should not be dictatorial about perfectly reasonable, to my mind, footwear.

Deciding which shoes pupils should wear is surely the province of parents and children. It cannot be right that children were punished and threatened with expulsion by a head who should surely have better things to do with his time than taking away breaks and lunchtimes.