The Department for Education has questioned the profitability of using teachers as student ‘pin cushions’, when Academies and unqualified staff can offer much better value for money. As West Yorkshire experiences its second stabbing incident by a pupil in as many years, Ministers have proposed that staff be replaced with un-unionised piñatas. NASUWT leader Chris Keates referred to it as a ‘crude cost-cutting measure’, although more accurately it is a measure of cutting up teachers crudely. An Education spokeswoman countered: ‘Why should we invest years of graduate and post-graduate training in a teacher who is likely just to get shanked by a grumpy GCSE student? It would be much cheaper just to put an ex-servicemen in the firing line – it’s not like we’ve got a shortage of them.’