As soon as Mrs Gill came to Filey School she promised better canteen facilities at the school. And, as a way to relieve the pressures she had, she let students go down town for lunch. Now she has secured funding for the new canteen she has put a stop to this.

However, what has struck me as imbecilic of the school is to attempt to do so so badly. First it uses the common room as the site for the canteen, saying it can still be used as a recreational area after eating. Piffle, I say. I know, from experience – 15 years of it – that eating takes around 15-20 minutes. And that's without the paraphernalia of getting the food, etc.

Because of the lunchtime being shortened very little time would be left when people have finished eating to converse and socialise.

The room would be littered with food debris, there would be no comfortable seating, no room to stand, and the odious smells from the food area would be omnipresent. Appealing? No.

Especially since Mrs Gill has the cheek to say the canteen-common room combination could also be used as a teaching area! Great! Walk into the classroom-common room-canteen, sit down on the chair (and half a sandwich), get distracted by the canteen staff putting away their stuff – excellent!

And how would canteen furniture, assuming it is similar to the current furniture, be suitable for a classroom?

The building it is proposed to convert has a low, flat roof that is weak and dilapidated. The windows are single-glazed and leak, and the vinyl floors are no good. With a budget of £175,000 how can she possibly correct all this?

Shortening the lunchtime is disadvantageous to people going home for lunch. It seems like a ploy to get more people to buy school dinners.

Another plan in the pipeline is to abolish the afternoon registration, saying it is obsolete due to computerised registration. Has it not been considered that if someone happens to be away for the afternoon for an extra-curricular activity people may be marked as having an unauthorised absence when they haven't? Or, that very few teachers do their registers at the start of the lesson, especially if they have a video to play, or whatever?

I'm in Year 11 so I've left Filey School and only have to go to school for exams. The changes don't affect me, but they affect the 820 or so students at the school. They're the ones that count.

Joe Spivey

Grange Avenue, Filey