Headteacher hits out over lollipop patrol cuts

A primary school headteacher has hit out after learning funding for the lollipop patrols that keep her pupils safe while crossing the road is to be axed.

From September, Rochdale Council will no longer pay for patrols at 35 schools where highways chiefs have assessed the road safety risk to children as low.

The authority has refused to publish the full list of schools facing the cut, citing the fact the process remains within a 10-day call-in period.

Crossgates Primary, in Milnrow is one of the schools facing the prospect of having to stump up £4,000.

Headteacher Jane Norton says her school’s pleas not to axe the funding have fallen on deaf ears at the town hall.

She says the Kiln Lane school will now have to pay the council for the service, as children would otherwise be put at an unacceptable risk.

She said: “We will be buying back into it, because it’s very dangerous outside my school.

“We have lobbied the council with photographs and pictures and letters from the children asking to keep it.

“There’s a 20mph zone outside, but there are juggernauts that go up and down, tractors – and people park up and down the road, so children can’t see where they’re going.”

Mrs Norton is  also concerned that children will not quickly adjust to the sudden withdrawal of the lollipop crossing service.

She said: “The children here are used to a crossing patrol here, so if they take it away they will just walk across, so it’s extremely dangerous.”

Rochdale Council they have also taken into account schools’ financial resources in coming to the decision – and that £4,000 is a relatively small amount to find from their budgets.

But Mrs Norton says the money should be going towards her pupils’ education.

Councillor James Gartside – a governor at Norden Community Primary School, has also criticised the move.

He said that he did not agree the road safety risk for pupils was low, and thought the school should pay ‘no more than a contribution’ to the operation of the patrol.

Rochdale Council will be issuing affected schools with formal notification they are withdrawing the free service on March 14.

Nick Statham, Local Democracy Reporter