November 13: No excuses over teacher morale

If this is the way forward – and the impressive improvements recorded by Redcar’s primary schools are testament to this approach – it should apply to all schools rather than the academies favoured by the Government.

All pupils should have a right to benefit from good practice. They also have a right to expect the very best teachers, a profound point made by the education guru David Weston at the inaugural Educated Yorkshire conference in which he highlighted the importance of professional development.

He was right to do so. There is a danger, as the morale of the teaching profession becomes sapped by Government interference, that classroom leaders simply go through the motions and lose sight of the reason why they sought a career in education in the first place – the chance to share their passion for learning.

Of course, Mr Weston’s approach needs to be handled sensitively – it will be counter-productive if it becomes just another tick-box exercise to satisfy the Department for Education’s pen-pushers – but it should not be dismissed out of hand. After all, the most successful schools are those which have the ability to recruit, and retain, the very best staff. This is key in Yorkshire, which remains at the bottom of the Government’s national league tables – the county’s academic fortunes will only improve if there are more inspirational classroom leaders who are prepared to go the extra mile. In this regard, there must be no excuses.

Misplaced loyalty

The £40m Kids Company scandal

DAVID Cameron finds himself damned by his own words when it comes to today’s scathing report into the serial mismanagement of Kids Company – and how this charity was given £40m of taxpayers’ money over 13 years without proper due diligence being undertaken into its use or otherwise.

Even if Mr Cameron is only responsible for the past five years, including the £3m grant given to the troubled organisation just six days before it folded, he was praising the charity – and its founder Camila Batmanghelidjh – to the hilt in 2006 when he delivered his “hug a hoodie” speech.

The transcript reveals that he lauded “the brilliance” of Kids Company on four separate occasions – the Tory leader said the key to tackling youth crime was by “giving real power to the real experts who can make the biggest difference”.

The inference was people like Ms Batmanghelidjh were better qualified than the Government. Yet, as the Public Accounts Committee makes clear, Kids Company enjoyed such carte blanche that it was even allowed to conduct its own performance audits. The consequence of this misplaced loyalty is the fact that vulnerable children elsewhere missed out because so much money was supporting this “Prime Minister-favoured charity” in two London boroughs.

Given the number of youth workers that could have been funded with this squandered £40m, practical steps must be taken so this mismanagement is never repeated – not least the shortcomings in Kids Company’s own governance arrangements which have so besmirched the charity sector. In the meantime, the PM owes the country an apology for being taken in by Ms Batmanghelidjh’s charm. He can begin by recommending that the charity worker is stripped of the honorary CBE that she was awarded two years ago.

Firefighting costs

Time for a Yorkshire brigade?

like THE Yorkshire devolution debate, national and local politicians appear to have differing priorities when it comes to the future of the fire and rescue service. The Government is exploring whether the remit should pass to crime commissioners; others say services should mirror the city-region apparatus being set up while others contend that the South and West Yorkshire brigades could join forces as a “needs must”.

It should not be like this. For, given the specialist work involved, the common sense solution should be a county-wide brigade to be set up, and which mirrors Yorkshire Ambulance Service. Not only will it be easier to deploy fire engines to 999 calls, but it will enable significant savings to be achieved by the merger of back-office functions.

The problem is that the £14m fire control centre at Wakefield, which stood empty for six years at a cost to the public purse of £5,000 a day, has finally been let. It would have been the ideal location for a county-wide fire and rescue service.