CHILDREN in Rawdon will be pleased to hear their tired old primary schools are about to get a new lick of paint.

Even better for all concerned is the news that one school, Rawdon Littlemoor, will finally have some indoor toilets for youngsters to use.

Good news all round then and something to look forward to in the New Year.

But before we all get too excited, we should remember that this is 1998 - almost 1999, nearly a new millennium, in fact.

The very idea that primary school children have had to endure years of trooping outdoors to old, cold and prehistoric loos is ridiculous.

It would be laughable if it wasn't such a telling indictment of how little money is provided for our schools these days.

Outside toilets are something representative of an age before most of Rawdon Littlemoor's youngsters' parents were even at school, even born perhaps.

Now we are approaching the year 2000 and, just in time, the Littlemoor pupils and their successors are finally granted the facilities they have been appealing for over many, many years.

Being Christmas, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth. But these things should be a matter of course for the authorities looking after the health and well being of the young students.

To have to wait 14 years for a fresh coat of paint and some hygienic toilets, is, in the words of ward councillor Brian Cleasby, 'pathetic'.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.