What a waste
IF Ministers are looking for ways to fund their school reforms, they would do well to look into the wasteful actions of their own department here in Yorkshire and the Department for Education's decision to throw out furniture worth hundreds of thousands of pounds as it moves, just minutes down the road, to a newly-kitted out office in Sheffield.
The thousands of office chairs, desks, filing cabinets and cupboards – many of them almost new – were set to be simply discarded at a landfill site until a charity intervened and arranged for the equipment to be sent to Kenya.
It is hard to imagine that our schools, which face such uncertainty about their own future funding, could afford to be so profligate. At a time when the region is being asked to make its share of the swingeing cuts that are required to tackle the deficit, it is crucial that Government leads by example and abides by the simple philosophy that economies begin at home.