TO have four schools with budgets in the red, as the county education department has for 1997/98, is misfortune. To have up to 50, which is what threatens the department in the coming year is, if not carelessness, a sign of something going wrong.

Senior education officer Alan Mander warned a members' panel on Wednesday that he was about to discuss up to 50 requests from teachers and governors, who fear their schools will be in debt by April 1999.

The head of a small village primary school, for instance, is asking parents to donate £10 a month per child to save the job of a teacher at the school. He says change in the age of transfer, which means primary schools lose their final year, is partly to blame.

Mr Mander appeared to think there was not too much to worry about, however, until the facts are collected. Many overspending schools would be able to get themselves back in balance by the end of next year. Members meanwhile demanded not only much earlier warnings of schools facing financial trouble, but also details of schools which had saved rather than spent money, and have healthy bank balances.

LIB Dem Chloe Willetts made the all-time classic mistake at a transport and road safety meeting, it seems. She voted for the opposite of what she had intended.

It was all about county council subsidising two Thames Valley Police vehicles with mobile cameras to help catch speeding drivers. The scheme was rejected, and Chloe was one of those who turned it down.

She told us later: "I meant to vote in favour of this. It is an excellent idea. I did not speak because I hoped it was a recommendation that would be passed. I did not want to activate Tory opposition. I was staggered that no one supported it, and in confusion voted the wrong way. Not that it would have made any difference to the result."

Chloe knows she will get a second chance, however. The scheme will go before the highways sub-committee at its next meeting and she intends to vote the right way.

COUNTY Hall is taking the advent of the year 2000 and its impact on their computer systems with due seriousness. Keeping their heads while all about them may be in turmoil, senior officers have set up a working group to sort out the problems and arrange insurance in case things should go wrong. They aim to complete changes to the systems by this time next year, and complete training by next December.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.