Parents of pupils at the Church Primary School in Thornton are right to be concerned about the safety of their children when the school moves next year to the Leaventhorpe Middle site. According to the head teacher, the new site is a mile away from many youngsters' homes in the centre of Thornton and there is no suitable and safe route to enable them to get there.

The problem is not so much one of distance. Some parents have taken on board the message of the recent Walk to School Week. They would be willing, if not perhaps always entirely happy, to walk a mile with their children to avoid cluttering the roads outside the school with cars. But understandably they do not want to do so if the route lies largely along a busy main road.

Ideally, they would like to see a new footpath created across the fields from the village to the school. That would not greatly reduce the distance but would at least take the young pedestrians away from the traffic.

The Council says it is aware of the concerns of parents and governors and has had its engineers looking at a scheme to provide a footpath. However, the matter is still under consideration as it is estimated the path would cost about £100,000 to create.

That seems a rather large sum. For the sake of the children who in a year will be expected to travel to the Leaventhorpe site, perhaps the Council engineers could go back to their drawing boards and try to devise a modified scheme at a more realistic cost.

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