Weekend jobs for youngsters who are still at school are a time-honoured and important part of education for life. Those youths and girls who take them on will arrive eventually in the world of full-time work with a good awareness of what is expected of them and experience of working in a team. They will also be doing their bit to help the family budget by earning some of their pocket money rather than expecting it all to be provided by their parents.

No doubt it was with the best of intentions that the Department of Health drew up a by-law outlawing under-18s from certain jobs while they are still in full-time education. The Government had the safety of the young people in mind.

However, for Education Bradford (one of less than a handful of authorities in the country to have acted upon this by-law) to have insisted that 16-year-old Ben Batters be sacked from the Ilkley butcher's shop where he works at the weekend seems to have been taking a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.

Certainly youngsters need to be protected from dangerous equipment. But so do all employees, whatever their ages. There are Health and Safety regulations to cover that sort of thing. They need, too, to be protected from exploitation, but there was no question of that in this case. Ben enjoys his job and his employers appreciate the way he does it.

Education Bradford, which has now backed down and said that Ben can work in the shop with certain safeguards, would be well advised to hold its powers in reserve and apply them very sparingly, and with common sense.