ON January 28 you published a letter from Dr P. Brendon in which he argued that among the first bureaucrats to be dispensed with in the forthcoming cuts in the County Education Department priority should be given to the education advisers who infest Shire Hall and that the last people to be sacked should be the teachers in the classrooms.
I wholeheartedly agree with this opinion and my agreement has been reinforced by the failure of the Chief Education Officer to reply to the charge that these bureaucrats are a flagrant waste of ratepayers’ money.
I would ask Mr Morris, the Chief Education Officer of the county, to state clearly and unequivocally in public reply to my letter how many full-time advisers, how many crypto-advisers who hold other posts in the Education Department, and how many other persons coming within the category of advisers, the county employs. I would also ask Mr Morris to state publicly what the total earnings of these advisers amount to per annum, what is the lowest and what the highest salary an individual adviser can earn, how much money they have at their command to spend per annum in their capacity as advisers, and how many subsidiary staff such as secretaries and typists etc. are allotted to these advisers and what their total cost comes to.
To make the issue even clearer and to prevent any blurring of the true facts behind a smokescreen of semantic qualifications I would further challenge Mr Morris to provide the public with both a maximum estimate and a minimum estimate of the cost to the county per annum of these advisers and the services they supposedly provide.
TOM SHARPE
33 Highfield Avenue, Cambridge.