Council with a busy bee in its bonnet

Jun 23 2009 by Val Javin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

I JUST have to reply to the bee article in Saturday's Examiner.

What next, as the article said. We are desperate for bees, and yet, Kirklees in its inevitable way has blocked something that would be doing the area a lot of good, insect wise.

I have an allotment, and all down one side is a flower bed planted with all sorts of flowers to attract bees, butterflies and any other insects who want to reside there and do some good to my and other plots on site.

Does this mean, that I cannot have bees now on my plot, as they are livestock. How many signs do I have to put up to say, you are no longer welcome here?

Just a thought, I thought livestock meant animals and that bees are insects. Perhaps someone somewhere will put me right, and tell me I am wrong.

Maggie Biggs

Allotment holder

Time council listened

I AM writing to you to express my deep concerns about the current proposals regarding the schools in East Bierley and Birkenshaw.

I moved back to Birkenshaw from Gomersal about three years ago because I wanted my children to follow the same educational path as I had done – East Bierley First School, Birkenshaw Middle School then onto Whitcliffe Mount.

I was initially apprehensive when I discovered that Kirklees had decided to discard the three tier system and revert to a two tier system, but was quickly appeased by the proposal of a high school in Birkenshaw. This sounded fantastic: a smaller high school that my children could actually walk to.

Now we face a high school miles away on the edge of our catchment area. Okay so there’s the promise of fantastic improvements, extensive vocational courses not currently available in smaller schools but we haven’t asked for this.

We’re happy for our children to learn the basic, core academic subjects. Our children are more than capable of achieving fantastic results. So why are we being sent to this school?

It seems this school is failing, parents in Birstall won’t send their children there due to the bad reputation. The school clearly has problems when it is surrounded by electric fences and is advertising for security guards.

Do councillors really expect us to sit back and say, “Thank you, this sounds like the best school for our children”? The message this sends is that our children are being used to improve the results and reputation of a struggling school.

To add insult to injury we are now faced with proposals to close East Bierley First School. Again councillors try to offer a “better” alternative: namely a larger school at the Birkenshaw Middle School site.

How convenient that then the school would no longer be available for a possible high school the angle the council are taking for the closure is about size.

A local villager has already offered land so the school can be extended: yes this will be a difficult procedure as it involves common land but it was manageable when it involved a housing development. The school will still be small but it has always been this way and has still achieved outstanding results from Ofsted. So why are the councillors so determined to take the heart and spirit of a village away when this is not our wish?

These proposals are very upsetting to parents, prospective and current and in general anyone who knows the schools. Isn’t it time that our views were listened to?

I will not send my children to Howden Clough High School. I won’t entertain sending my child to a first school in Birkenshaw. If these changes go ahead, as a family our only course of action will be to move back to Gomersal or out of Kirklees altogether!

We are decent citizens who pay our taxes to this council. We deserve a voice and we deserve a solution that is to the advantage of every Kirklees resident. At a recent consultation we were told that the current proposals favoured the majority.

Local councils do not have an obligation to look after the majority of their residents; they have a clear duty to look after all of them.

Kerry Baines

Birkenshaw

Short-sighted again

WHEN I became a governor of a J & I school in Mirfield 10 year ago, I was impressed by the forward looking and enlightened attitude that Kirklees had to dyslexia in schools.

Dyslexia then was just becoming more widely recognised as a condition that if not addressed meant children could not read, write or learn easily and they soon become alienated from education as a result.

The most alarming statistic is that so many people in prison have got there through alienation from education brought on by dyslexia resulting in disruptive behaviour, inevitable exclusions and all that follows.

It was so impressive to find an authority with a positive attitude to dealing with a recently identified but little known problem.

Within a few years however I was alarmed to find that the dyslexia programme was being abandoned and dyslexia was to be treated along with all other forms of special needs. The reason was so obviously that treating dyslexia in schools costs money so the initiative was abandoned and the dyslexia co-ordinators “let go.”

Now our illustrious Government has recognised the problem and 4,000 teachers are to be trained to be dyslexia specialists.

This is all the evidence you need to conclude that at some time in the last 10 years the education programme in Kirklees was taken over by those that know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Thus it is with their approach to the BSF programme and the threatened closure of Castle Hall School in Mirfield and the totally bogus justification for this put forward by officers and councillors alike.

If however the school were to be closed it would be impossible to reverse this in 10 years time as by then the school grounds will have become a housing estate and given that KMC cannot find enough space in the area for a new health centre there is no chance of them ever finding room for a school.

For the sake of our children we must stop Kirklees from closing Castle Hall School – a short sighted proposal based on nothing other than envy and economics with no educational benefit or justification.

Tim Conolly

Mirfield

Closure plan unsound

I AM writing in opposition to the proposals to close Castle Hall School and subsequently expand the MFG as I believe the justification and proposal to close Castle Hall School are not educationally sound.

Castle Hall School currently offers a varied and diverse curriculum to all its pupils and underpins its exceptionally good academic and vocational learning with an outstanding level of personal and social development opportunities. Castle Hall School also maintains exceptionally good levels of functional skills in English, maths and ICT and works consistently hard to actively promote and reinforce discipline and respect that without question outshines any other school within the whole of Kirklees.

The impact upon the pupils at the school that is created by this balanced level of ‘holistic learning’ has gone a very long way to creating a unique ethos at Castle Hall and at no level should this work by the headmaster and staff within the school be overlooked or left without consideration.

With the overarching governmental reforms in 14–19 education, the raising of the school leaving age and introduction of The Foundation Learning Tier for Level 1 achievement and progression to Level 2 destinations within Apprenticeships, GCSE’s and the 14–19 Diploma. Castle Hall School should not even be given consideration of closing.

With Modern Language Status, offering six different languages to enrich the learning experiences and opportunities of its pupils to truly become advocates of a diverse Europe, this level of language understanding does much to promote the ‘REAL’ ethos of equality and diversity for everyone and contributes to a stronger tolerance of citizenship. This school is exactly the type of school we should all be sending our children to – what a better place we would all live in for it.

Castle Hall School alongside its GCSE certificates, also offer a range of vocational courses, such as ASDAN and the Duke of Edinburgh Award in recognition of the wider learning styles of its pupils.

Castle Hall School has been described by OFSTED (2007) as “a calm and well ordered community.” And for many, many years has worked consistently hard to build up and maintain its high level reputation. Castle Hall School has within its history turned out young people who have moved on and become real contributors to society, with ex-pupils working within area such as television and the West Yorkshire Police Force. This ethos and culture is unique to Castle Hall and is a positive factor for parental choice.

It is unimaginable that Kirklees Council, already struggling to prove its own level of merit and worth, should within the government’s 14–19 reforms consider putting themselves on a back foot from the very beginning by considering closure and not development investment of the school.

Kirklees needs more schools of the calibre of Castle Hall, not fewer.

Stephanie Khorenjenko

Well oiled solution?

ŠPEOPLE of Huddersfield – worry not. The ongoing saga of the Chinese pink granite is soon to be solved.

Leaving the railway station the other day I was amazed at the number of taxis all parked around, waiting for fares. But as each one moved on a space, I saw some tiny black dots on the controversial ‘granite’.

After several weeks all the pink granite will be covered by black dripping oil from these taxis, and the problem will have disappeared.

Perhaps the money saved by the taxi owners, when the authority ‘climbed down’ in its bid to ‘equalise’ the licensing fees, could be used to repair all the vehicles and remove the oil stains.

But, at the end of the day, isn’t it better to cover pink granite in black oil spots than spoil fine Yorkshire stone?

Dave Walker

Huddersfield