A costly exercise indeed

In a reply to my Guardian online guest blog, Wasateacher talked about cost. Well, yes indeed. I don't know what the top brass at Ed Lds earn, but I imagine rather more than me or you. They get paid by the taxpayer [this includes me and you] to persecute small people, and we, we are paid nothing for all the time we spend opposing the persecution. And OMG, I read in the paper this week, that four senior managers from Leeds Children's Services received £35.000 between them in severance payments. And that director of Children's Services final pay was probably between £122.133 and £146,237. Whoa, that's loads more than you and me.

How much, besides the fat cat wages of the people sitting at the top tables, chairing, and presenting the arguments for closure all in one go, how much goes in caretakers' etc wages to open these schools of an evening? How much went on the pointless and wasteful use of trees that are these superficially glossy, yet intellectually vacuous consultation documents?

How many of us forewent our evening classes, both teaching them and attending them in order to challenge the proposed closures [because, believe me, nobody went in support!]?

Human cost, and cost to society? Well, where do you start, and when will it end?

Education Leeds has done everything it can to rubbish the inner-city schools that it should have been caring for. And, in doing so, it has created a deep feeling of distrust and loathing for ordinary, decent, hardworking school staffs, who chose to take on the difficulties of the inner-city, as a career choice.

So, all those parents, allocated schools by Education Leeds that Education Leeds has declared it plans to close, are naturally angry. Who can blame them? I sent my own kids to City of Leeds School during a respite from the closure threats. I wouldn't have sent them anywhere that was due to close.

A new headteacher to Leeds, a few years ago, told a meeting that she realised that Education Leeds was not exactly "cutting edge". I rest her case.