Heat Death of an Empire ...

I am very aware that I have an established readership of this blog. I enjoy your feedback via twitter, facebook, Google+ and occasionally comments. Those who are frequent followers should understand my style, just running under the radar. Avoiding names, gender, incrimination etc. 

So, lets explore the empire, now where that is, you can only guess, I will not say. But what has amused me in the last couple of weeks as news has been breaking about a certain educational establishment is how certain other interest groups have jumped onto the bandwagon adding their own facts to this conundrum.

It is as if, there is an agenda out there.

DO NOT get me wrong, i am no fan of the 'empire'; but nor am I a fan of those with only half the facts attempting to generate a truth for their own ends.

Lets look at the reality here. Many are taking this situation as an inditement of 'Goves' Academy agenda. Ok, its a further education college that is being investigated. None of the academies are apparently under the spotlight. If they are, the news seems to have evaded this.

Whilst two have backed out, due to doubts over the 'management' of the federation in question. Nobody seems to be focussing on the other academies in this organisation? Why is this?

Also; Gove is in my personal opinion doing many daft things with our national education. But the CEO of this organisation announced their intention to acquire two failing schools as academies in 2005/6? ... at least four years before the current government came into power. They were operational before then, and allegedly turned around before this time. Why do I know, I left the empire in 2008, it was already 'a done deed' at this time.

So, who are we pointing the finger at?

Going on, yes, they seem to have acquired many others, some have failed, I can think of two. Much of this has been under the auspices of the new government. So questions can be asked in this vein. But lauded by Labour as successful, they are also lauded by the Conservatives in the same way. So who is wrong?

We could pick up other issues at the college, which in my personal opinion was neglected from about 2006/7 when the staff managed to secure another grade one. We were well rehearsed from 2003, it was not difficult.

Getting rid of different rounds of staff and different pay grades at different times. Whilst the college was the largest part of the federation. Opinion amongst the inmates was that it as the most underserved. Its surplus may have bank rolled the conversion of the academies but it did not get the kickback needed.

So, we describe the 1.2million deficit and the 915,000 'misclaim' of funding; something worth watching. Does anyone remember the interview on three counties radio by the then interim CEO's. Compare this to the current reports from the BBC. Then think about it.

In the public domain, nobody is asking the staff about what is happening, nobody is asking about the non-disclosure agreements. I did not sign one. Publicly nobody is asking about how the figures must have looked during the last ofsted and it would appear that nobody has considered if any awarding organisations should be involved.

Sadly now it is all a bit of a mucking fess; I do feel sorry for the students and the teaching/support staff.





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