FOR better or worse the impact of having a new Government is now finally starting to be felt – especially, this week, in the field of education and sport. The fact big cuts were coming in last week's comprehensive spending review should have been no surprise to anyone given the mantra of "the country is bankrupt " and "we're all in this together" that the coalition has been promoting ever since it came to power.

But some of the headline claims made last Wednesday, especially about how the education budget had been "protected", seem to be problematic – to say the least – upon further scrutiny. Education Secretary Michael Gove's changes to funding for specialist colleges will have an effect on all the secondary schools in Wharfedale, Aireborough and Horsforth.

Because all of our schools are specialists – in everything from science and the humanities, at Ilkley Grammar School, to languages at Prince Henry's in Otley – they currently receive a separate, £129 per pupil fund to pursue that specialism.

All that looks set to change under the Government's plans – though no one, from politicians through to the headteachers themselves, seems to quite know how. The only certainty seems to be that those schools will no longer have that ring-fenced specialism funding, leaving headteachers like Prince Henry's Janet Sherrif "very worried" about the future.

Meanwhile the area's school sports look set to lose the momentum they have gained from more than a decade of help from the local School Sports Partnership, based at St Mary's School in Menston. The partnership, like others across the country, has had its annual funding of £285 million stopped, leaving its very future in doubt.

On top of all this we have had the axing of the Building Schools for the Future programme earlier this year, which signalled an end to Ilkley Grammar School's hopes of moving to a new, bigger building to better cope with a rising demand for places.

Bradford Council is now having to try to think of other ways of restricting entry to the school to ensure the most deserving pupils get in, but it looks a near impossible task, however they decide to tweak the admissions formula.

Of course the Government will say that all of these things are just part of the "tough choices" it has had to make, given the state of the country's finances. But people, and parents, would respect politicians of all party allegiances better if they simply told us the truth, however unwelcome – and stopped making false promises.