Column: A daunting task in the next academic year - Dennis Richards, former headteacher's view on education

​Best wishes also to the new Heads starting in September at New Park, Oatlands Infants, Grove Road and St Aidans.

There will be many others of whom I am unaware. All face a daunting task in the next academic year and all deserve our support. With their teacher recruitment for a start. Fewer than half the targeted number of trainee secondary teachers have been appointed to start this autumn.

The Times last weekend almost read like it was an April 1 edition. The Home Office is pushing for a reduction in work-related visas, given the immigration furore.

Meanwhile the Department for Education is busily doing the opposite, with plans to offer £10,000 to welcome teachers from outside Europe on a teacher recruitment drive.

Thankfully, the end of the academic year is fast approaching. A month of exams, the end of year festivities, proms for Year 11 and Year 13 and summer concerts and drama productions. School summer trips seem to be in sharp decline.

The news that several school ski trips at Easter only got as far as Dover, trapped in a coach for a day or more, was as off-putting as it can get.

For those readers who have not given up in despair, there is refreshing news from two of Harrogate’s community groups. The Tewit Band organisation, led by legendary President Colin Gibbs BEM, continues to fly the flag for the best of Yorkshire brass band music across the world.

Last year the Youth Band visited twin town Montecatini in Italy.

Later this year the adult Tewit Silver band will be at the Fete des Fleurs in Luchon in France. Harrogate RUFC U’16 team will visit another of Harrogate’s twin towns, Barrie in Canada, at the end of July.

Twinning with Barrie was given a significant boost when newly appointed Barrie mayor, Alex Nuttall visited the Harrogate Spring Flower Show in April.

Mayor Nuttall met representatives from Harrogate Chamber of Commerce, Harrogate BID, laid a wreath at Stonefall CWGC cemetery and did the ‘Harrogate Tour’. Harrogate International Partnerships is grateful to the Yorkshire Hotel for their generous hospitality and sponsorship for Mayor Nuttall’s visit.

Situated close to Toronto, the town of Barrie took its name from Sir Robert Barrie, who married into the Ingilby family at Ripley Castle in 1812.

Regarded by historians as an important figure in the creation of modern Canada, the town of Barrie took his name, and on June 7 each year celebrates Sir Robert Barrie Day.

Thanks to the initiative of Sir Thomas Ingilby and Alderman Newby, former Mayor of Harrogate, our two towns were formally ‘twinned’ in 2013.

Alderman Newby has been invited by Mayor Nuttall along with a business representative, to join the June 7 celebrations in a week’s time.

The Harrogate town flag will be raised over Barrie City Hall to mark the tenth anniversary of the link.