Arts Council bosses paid thousands of pounds to send four Tyneside teachers to a conference at the exclusive Waikiki resort of Honolulu, it emerged yesterday. The four-day trip, which cost just over £7,000, was condemned as a waste of public money after it emerged it was funded by the North-East region of the Arts Council England, which is Government and lottery funded. Three headteachers and one deputy head from North and South Tyneside stayed at the Sheraton Waikiki resort for the 3rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities. The four delegates were representing Arts Council England's Creative Partnerships programme, which includes 15 schools across North and South Tyneside. Arts Council and Creative Partnership officials said the conference was necessary to forge international links and promote the North-East region. Sheelagh Tickell from Goathland Primary School in Longbenton, Alan Egdell of St Bernadette's School in Wallsend, Sue March of Jarrow Epinay School, and Elizabeth Phillips of Downhill Infants in South Shields, were on the trip. But Coun Graeme Brett, whose Wallsend ward includes one of the schools involved, St Bernadette's, said: "I am very surprised to hear of this excursion. I would have thought the money could have been better spent elsewhere. "Surely something more substantial could have been made of these thousands of pounds. Think of all the equipment which could have been bought with that cash. "I would be interested to hear what possible benefit this conference has for schools in North and South Tyneside. "I think there needs to be a thorough review into the way the Arts Council gives its grants and what it chooses to promote. Surely they could have achieved better value with what, at the end of the day, is taxpayers' money. Hawaii seems a very long way to go." But Paul Collard, national director of Creative Partnerships, said: "Creative Partnerships is a project to improve standards in schools by developing the arts side of the curriculum. "Part of it is learning what happens in different places. It's extremely important that we don't confine ourselves to just learning from practices in the UK. "We felt this was an extraordinary opportunity to learn a huge amount about the practices in 40 different countries across the world in a very short period of time. The conferences take place in different countries and it just so happened that this year the conference was in Hawaii." He added that knowledge learned from the conference would be shared with 230 teachers at 15 Tyneside schools and also passed out across the region and the country. North Tyneside Mayor Linda Arkley said: "I don't blame these schools for accepting the money when it was given but I am not happy this is going on while the Government is failing to provide sufficient funding for North Tyneside schools." A North Tyneside Council spokesman said that the money did not come from any school or education authority budget and that it was not money that could have been directly used within the schools. | 
Northumberland
