Letter: Our market town schools do not need a PCSO presence

They should have been totally disbanded at the start of the nation's cuts programme and the money used to pay front line, fully trained police officers.

This idea to use them in London schools, where we are told the majority of PCSOs will be stationed, is possibly due to the many issues these schools have with pupils involved in knife culture, drugs, gangs, etc.

I find it hard to believe many schools in our market towns suffer from the same issues. The Marches School, in Oswestry, is not on par with an inner city school and in a recent Ofsted report pupils in general felt 'safe' – so why the need?

The role of the PCSO in these inner city schools and at The Marches could be carried out by a uniformed security guard who should be employed and paid for by the school with the issues. The guard could be given the relevant training in order to carry out the role as required by that school. A security guard would also be considerably cheaper.

Pupils are safe in general within a UK school environment. We do not live in the USA and USA-inspired initiatives are not required in the UK.

We do not need to waste taxpayers' money on putting people such as PCSOs within our schools where basically they will inevitably end up engaging in idle chit-chat with staff and pupils and the occasional press photo opportunity. Neither do we need to worry parents unduly that they could be sending their children to a place that needs a security guard or PCSO. They are not young offenders institutes.

If there is a need for PCSOs, then they should be out in our community patrolling our streets seven days a week, 24 hours a day, in the trouble hot spots, not engaging in silly pointless initiatives, silly photo PR exercises etc. If they can't do that then they are indeed pointless and a total waste of taxpayers' money.

Andrew Finch, Wattlesborough