A question of fun at school

Some schools marked Red Nose Day. Others did not. But what disappointed me was the suggestion that the children at Burnsall School do not have fun or support charity.

My role as a vicar takes me into a number of Upper Wharfedale primary schools. All are very good schools, but I can honestly say that Burnsall stands out in at least two ways.

Firstly, for the sheer enjoyment to be at school that the pupils display.

The week before Red Nose Day, the children all arrived at school in the most fantastic, creative and funny costumes dressed as characters from their favourite stories.

Secondly, for the caring attitudes that the children have to one another and to the world around them.

Children at Burnsall do learn to care in practical ways. This term they supported both Tsunami relief and Leukaemia Research in a major way.

In addition some of the children with the support of the headteacher helped at local charity fundraising events. For this, and for fostering an excellent learning environment, the headteacher and staff at Burnsall School deserve great credit, not criticism.

The Rev Andy Chrich,

The Rectory,

Hebden Road, Grassington.

SIR - I am saddened that the headmistress of Burnsall School is being pilloried by some of the parents.

We all believe in charity but somehow some charities do seem to be able to generate so much publicity that they get a disproportionate amount of money available.

For millions of people in this country it seems amazing that, at the drop of a hat, the Government can find £8 billion to bomb and then invade Iraq, but hospices and children's welfare have to depend on charity and in this case, children obtaining money from their parents.

She took a brave stance and I and many friends agree with her.

Rowena (Bunty) Leder,

Hebden Road,

Grassington.

SIR - I felt I must reply to the letters aimed at Mrs Longthorne concerning the ban on Red Nose Day at Burnsall school.

Do any of these people actually know Mrs. Longthorne or the way she brings up her children? Where in the article did she say anything about Burnsall not being a good school or the teachers and headmistress having to "skip formal lessons" to take part in the said event.

I read the article as simply the children missing out on a fun way of raising money for charity by being "really daft" for a day and wearing a silly red nose.

I know that in the recent past Burnsall school has been raising money for children with leukaemia and Kenyans at Christmas. The head teacher was saying that she didn't feel she could ask the parents for any more money but if you ask most parents on the run up to Comic Relief Day, most of them would say they had bought a red nose for their child.

This is all Mrs Longthorne was stating - that the children should wear their red noses on that day.

My own son is at school and had silly hair and a red nose for the day you could make a contribution if you wished with no disruption to lessons throughout the day.

With many friends of children in different schools throughout the area, I know that there was no school disruption at all. So for those people who have personally attacked Mrs Longthorne when knowing nothing about her or her family I say you apologise for getting the facts wrong when all I think she wanted was for her daughter to enjoy raising money for the less fortunate without asking teachers or the headmistress to be involved and disrupt the school day.

Mrs C Flesher

Addingham Moorside, Ilkley.

SIR - I don't particularly want to prolong the Burnsall School/Red Nose debate, however, I am moved to respond to Mrs Hammond's concerns as to whether many of the children at the other schools know where the money raised is spent.

On the last day of term, parents of Year Five and Six children at Threshfield School were invited to the regular special assembly where the children present their review of the term's work. Their teacher, Brettel Roberts, advised us at the beginning that the she had not had any input in the assembly at all and that the children had put it together entirely themselves.

What followed was a deeply moving presentation of work which clearly illustrated that prior to and after Red Nose Day the children had been learning about the issues involved right across their curriculum.

It was clear that this work had made a tremendous impact on the children, which they communicated with startling clarity to us in an amazing stream of facts and figures about the poverty cycle and the problems of the Third World.

We were shown, as a maths presentation on the whiteboard, exactly how the money they personally had raised could most effectively be spent, for example, blackboards @ £35 each, sets of pens and pencils @ £1 and so on down to the last few pence to feed a family.

It was clear Red Nose Day had certainly had far greater significance to these kids than the crazy hair they had worn for school and they have subsequently each written a letter to the United Nations demanding action. I found the assembly deeply humbling as it was evident that my 10-year-old son has a much deeper understanding of the issues than I do. Although saying that, he still nags for that new Playstation game and to stop at the sweet shop and wants that new pair of...

Jane Ellison-Bates.

Kilnsey.

SIR - It never fails to amaze and even humour me to see how some people can respond to an article and yet somehow not refer to the content of the article but go off the main track and head off down the back lanes to the extent that they end up being blinded by a mist of their own making.

Comments in last week's letters supposedly responding to the Red Nose and Burnsall School article of the week before are prime examples.

Comments like "..the head-teacher, and all the staff are doing outstanding work for our children" ... "Read the recent Ofsted report" ... "Burnsall School is a good school, that's official"... "I don't think there is anything in the school curriculum that says schools should support Red Nose Day or that it needs to be organised by teachers".

There was nothing I read anywhere in the article that stated a view to warrant such comments and anyone reading them couldn't be blamed for thinking their copy of the Craven Herald of the week before had been heavily censored!

I have no doubt whatsoever that the staff at Burnsall school make the school one to be proud of and comments such as above could have been written at anytime of the year, but not as a so-called response to what was in the article. The comments clearly didn't do that.

A further point, a little more worrying, is to read comments in response to something the reader may have disagreed with, they then set off down the personal attack route. We see this more frequently these days.

How sad do these people naively think that by coming close to making a libellous statement they can score a point? How silly and immature they are seen to be and it doesn't refer to the original interest.

One final point on last week's letters, there was mention that a Red Nose school event isn't in the curriculum and that teachers shouldn't be expected to give their time to organising the event. This is true of course but doesn't this apply to all fundraising events? If any part of school time or teacher involvement was given up to fundraising other charities last year at Burnsall, then that argument simply doesn't hold water.

All schools have to make-up their own minds about their involvement in any fundraising event and I'm pleased to hear that most schools did not adopt a 'No Red Nose Day' policy. What a loss of a huge slice of fun and finance that would have been.

Ken Edgar (senior)

Kappelen, Belgium.

SIR - Skipton derives its name from 'sheep town', according to The History of Skipton, by W Harbutt Dawson, published in 1882.

Mr Dawson records that the "town of sheep" must have acquired its name from the vast tracts of sheep-walk which lay around it: "Among other forms are Scepton, Scepetone, Sehipton, Scipeden, Seipton, Sciptone, Skipden, Scipdon. Skibeden, Skybeden and Skypton."

So the town of sheep, like any other community, must have had its fair share of black sheep, one of whom is causing concern among the descendants of an old Skipton family, who are trying to solve a mystery concerning a grandfather they never knew - then heard of in a surprising and somewhat shocking revelation.

Michael Clayton, aged 78, of Stockport, Cheshire, and his brother Jack, 84, of Sprotborough, near Doncaster, both retired journalists, have recently learned about an article in the 150th anniversary edition of the Craven Herald about their grandfather, John Thomas Clayton, who was editor of the Herald from 1912 to 1928.

In the article it recorded that Mr Clayton was sacked for "insubordination and neglect of duty", and says that a "descendant of Mr Clayton contacted the current editor Ian Lockwood a few years ago seeking information. The descendant said 'Mr Clayton was known as a black sheep who liked a drink and the family rumour was that he had been caught entertaining Skipton ladies of doubtful reputation in the editor's rooms above the High Street office'."

The article ended with this paragraph: "The legend is that Mr Clayton turned to drink and came to a sticky end - he died when he was run over by a horse and cart while emerging from a pub in Barrowford - though we have no confirmation as to the veracity of this information"

Neither Michael Clayton nor his brother Jack knew their grandfather, and their late father, Douglas Clayton, also a journalist, and his late sister, Harriet May Clayton, of Holywell Cottage, Skipton, rarely if ever spoke of their father.

The only significant record of the allegedly infamous JTC is an imposing photograph of him in Masonic regalia looking a very distinguished citizen of no doubt very strict Methodist upbringing.

So...was JTC the original black one of the Town of Sheep? And who is the mysterious "descendant" who revealed the shocking past of a major citizen of the town?

Jack Clayton said: "It's set me wondering, there may be far more to the Clayton family than we realise!".

I can remember my Aunt May passing critical comments about the Masonic photograph of her father, but she never had much to say about him. And no wonder. She was a regular churchgoer, a lovely lady of high principles, and must have been terribly shocked at her father's dismissal all those years ago.

If the revelations in the Craven Herald about JTC are true, would the person who made them please step forward and contact us. If he doesn't, well, all I can say is he'd better watch out for a horse and cart when leaving his local pub.

Mike Clayton,

32 Fullerton Road,

Heaton Moor

Stockport, Cheshire.

SIR - I write to you to express The Friends of the Settle-Carlisle Line committee's anxiety over recent events within the rail world, in the shape of the draft Railways Bill currently wending its way through a Parliamentary Standing Committee.

In our current magazine I took the liberty of raising the whole issue of the Railway Passengers Councils (RPCs), with which we have had a fruitful connexion, both in Manchester and York.

We consider that their proposed abolition beggars belief, especially the notion that rail passengers will benefit from such a move, when - patently - the opposite is clearly true.

The proposed replacement quango will never ever muster that sort of local, truly independent knowledge currently available to RPC members, and this seemingly anti-democratic proposal flies in the face of the Labour Party's drive for increased public involvement over local issues, especially transport. It is difficult not to conclude that advocates and champions, following Department of Transport civil servants' advice would be a travesty of that advice so professionally able to be offered at the moment by RPCs.

I recall, 18 months before I set foot on a Virgin Voyager, the North West RPC's comments on their patent shortage of luggage provision!

Worse still are the revised closure proceedings neatly termed "Network Amendment Proposals", though the actual detail lies very obscurely in a well-hidden schedule to the Bill. This shortens the closure procedure by half, removes the right for a public hearing (which the Regional Committees would have held) and vests decision-making in the Office of the Rail Regulator.

It is inconceivable that the world-famous Settle to Carlisle line, supported by the largest rail-user group in the country, would have ever survived such a set of draconian proposals if closure had then been implemented in the way now proposed: 'the line which refused to die' would have been truly hollow!

The Bill also affects PTEs, in that they will not automatically be signatories to new franchises (especially relevant as the recent launch of Northern Rail capitalised on PTEs' expertise and financial support),and the quite frightening suggestion that they will have the power to remove local rail services, whilst retaining that funding for bus-replacement services. Has anyone actually envisaged travelling by bus from Carlisle to Skipton, serving the scattered communities along this backbone of England, with their proven need for increased, not weakened rail links? Few would doubt that the PTEs have been a major public transport success story; to hinder their successful work in such a way is nothing short of scandalous.

Hardly surprisingly, alarm bells ring when we hear of the review of the Northern franchise which is to be undertaken on SRA's behalf by consultants. A review was indeed expected but even Northern's Customer Relations correspondence now speaks of subsidy-level as bedeviling our keen anxieties about insufficient rolling-stock at peak times on our scenic line. A real sea-change is urgently needed to ensure that northern (and Northern!) public aspirations for rail travel can be made more effective and appealing, thus increasing passenger revenue and, correspondingly, decreasing subsidy.

It is sad that, at a time when usage of the Settle-Carlisle Line is clearly increasing (hardly a night passes when the rumble of a goods train does not waken me up) such a flawed process should be under the due process of legalisation. It is even more ironic that all this comes at a time when we have had a visit by the Prince of Wales whose presence gave an accolade to a line of which British Rail machinations nearly deprived us.

As chairman of The Friends' Committee for over five years, I would urge you to question a process which undermines all that has been so clearly successful over many years, ensuring that railways remain a key provider of public transport in the North for all to enjoy, and benefit from, not to be whittled away by the Railways Bill's closure powers or the damaging effect of the SRA's consultants' calculators.

Should you feel able to support my committee's views, it would be enormously helpful if you could respond to this letter, and that we seek a platform to make our views clearly known. The Friends have already written to MPs along the line and will seek to progress this issue as far as we are able to.

Philip Johnston,

President,

Friends of the Settle to Carlisle Railway

SIR - As residents of Barnoldswick, we wish to make it known how much we appreciate the building of a new raised footpath from Victory Park, leading to Greenberfield Lane, behind the Rolls Royce factory.

The footpath has been built by the Rolls Royce apprentices from start to finish, including working out and ordering all materials needed, with a great deal of hard work and dedication from all concerned.

The path is used regularly by us and many other walkers and can now also be used by wheelchair users.

Before this footpath was made, three quarters of the pathway was flooded in winter by the adjacent stream, making it totally inaccessible and I might add very slippery and quite dangerous, so a very big thank on behalf of all of us.

Mr and Mrs R Smith,

Darnbrook Road,

Barnoldswick.