Tag Archives: OFSTED

BILLIE JEAN TAKES A BOW

So it’s farewell, then, to Bristol City Council Chief Exec Mike “Billie Jean” Jackson. He’s off to the London Boroughs of Wandsworth and Richmond upon Thames to become their joint chief exec trousering £300k pa, the largest local authority salary in the country.

And what a legacy he leaves behind. £60m pissed up the wall on Bristol Energy; a £50m overspend on the Colston Hall; censures from the ombudsman for not bothering to reply to correspondence; a SEND service OFSTED say parents have lost trust in and a gobsmacking unlawful spying operation of parents with SEND children. Lucky old London managing to headhunt this useless money wasting fucker.

Before he left, Billie Jean delivered to indifferent staff the benefit of his wisdom. “I’m an economist by training,” he chuntered, “and specialised in economic geography. I started my local government career as an economic development officer in Birmingham. I’m fascinated by places – what makes the character of a place, why some places succeed economically and others struggle. And most importantly, trying to work out how best to improve the life chances of people who live in that place.”

Well, we’re no economists Mike, but we reckon that some places succeed because you spend £100m on a concert hall at the drop of a hat for them while other places that are far poorer get fuck all. If you want to improve the life chances of people who live in that poor place spend the £100m there you thick twat.

‘Place shaper’ my arse.

SEND PARENT SPYING SCANDAL: LEAKED EMAIL

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A leaked email from the Bristol City Council education managers at the heart of the SEND spying scandal reveals them plotting over what information they would provide to Bristol Parent Carer Forum.

The email clearly indicates that Education Director Alison Hurley was personally overseeing what sensitive personal data from parents should be unlawfully released to third parties

At the time, Vikki Jervis was Principle Education Psychologist at Bristol City Council. What parents were saying on social media had to do with education psychology is something of a mystery. Although she appears to be the council’s expert on RIPA and GDPR and releasing personal information obtained through surveillance to third parties.

Virginia Roberts is a consultant brought in as SEND lead for Bristol’s Written Statement of Action for OFSTED. It’s her job to oversee an improvement in SEND in Bristol after its terrible OFSTED inspection. How does monitoring and sharing parents’ social media posts relate to improving Bristol’s SEND service? Has Roberts shifted her focus to silencing parents rather than improving her service?

Maybe SEND management are more concerned with monitoring parents’ social media and supplying gossip to third parties than doing the jobs they are handsomely paid to do?

TOENAIL TRUST TROUSERS OUR KIDS’ CASH

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Which local Academy Trust is charging its schools at least EIGHT PER CENT of their core income for “central services” – one of the highest figures in the country? Step forward the VENTURERS TRUST, the hopelessly underperforming education wing of the Society of Wealthy Old White Men (Surely Merchant Venturers? Ed.)

Last year the greedy COLSTON TOENAIL WORSHIPPERS charged their eight schools eight per cent of their general annual grant (GAG) – the funding each academy gets from the Department for Education. These charges are for ‘BUSINESS SERVICES’ such as human resources, financial services, legal services, educational support services, property services and, of course, “PR AND COMMUNICATIONS”. The kind of lucrative work, incidentally, that the toenail trustees and their wealthy mates specialise in!

However, while charging our schools and children TOP WHACK FOR MARGINAL CRAP, the Toenail Trust has been struggling on a number of fronts. In OFSTED terms, THREE of its schools are currently rated as INADEQUATE and another “REQUIRES IMPROVEMENT”. Meanwhile, the chair of the Trust, Anthony Browne, DISAPPEARED over the summer following an expensive spot of LEGAL BOTHER. Although the precise cost of this little escapade is yet to be revealed.

We do, however, know that the trust’s EIGHT SCHOOLS were charged £1.53M FOR CENTRAL SERVICES in 2017-18 and this was about nine per cent of the £17 million received from the general annual grant that year. Oddly, the previous year, the schools had been charged less than HALF THIS AMOUNT, a comparatively small £633,000. Where did all this extra public cash collected by WEALTHY TRUSTEES WITH LAVISH LIFESTYLES go in this age of austerity?

The same accounts also show that the Toenail Trust’s chief executive, HILARY MACAULEY, personally trousered £145-£150,000. Just under £150,000, which the Department for Education has said should only go to leaders for “EXCEPTIONAL” performance.

A highly unlikely outcome at the Toenail Trust.

PARENTS SEND THEIR REGARDS

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Parents of Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) kids, royally SHAFTED by useless council social care boss Jacqui “Village” Jensen and her merry-go-round of clueless and unaccountable interim education chiefs on BIG MONEY were out in force at the Counts Louse on Tuesday 2 October. This was after OFSTED inspectors put out a call to parents to pop in and tell them what they think of SEND provision in Bristol as part of their statutory inspection of the Bristol City Council’s SEND disaster area.

Terms such as “CARNAGE” and “BLOODBATH” were liberally supplied to The BRISTOLIAN to describe the scenes as around 40 stressed and disgusted parents queued up to BLAST Village’s useless department that has failed to produce 98 PER CENT of their Education, Health and Social Care Plan (EHCP) on time. Without one of these plans many of the city’s most vulnerable children are UNABLE to access any kind of education in the city and children have been stranded at home with some parents having to give up work to care for and educate their kids themselves.

Village was clearly expecting trouble as she was spotted, with a host of her social and education ‘top guns’ fawning over her, loitering near the parents as they waited to meet the Ofsted inspectors. One parent commented to us that highly paid council bosses aimlessly hanging about at the Council House feigning concern, “PERFECTLY SYMBOLISED THE COUNCIL’S RESPONSE TO THEIR ONGOING SEND CRISIS“.

But the big question is, when the abysmal OFSTED report arrives, will Jensen do the decent thing and do us all a favour and agree to aimlessly hang about at home on her own time on a permanent basis?

ONE RULE FOR THE RICH… VENTURER SCHOOL KEEPS NAME OF MASS MURDERER

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Colston Girls School: keeping the toxic brand of a mass murderer because wealthy twits say so

Does anyone remember these schools… Monks Park, St George, Whitefield, Speedwell, Hengrove, Portway, Brislington, Hartcliffe and Withywood? Two things unite them all; they were not private schools and they have all had their names changed (or rebranded as some consultant tosser would say) over the last few years. All of this renaming was carried out when they became ACADEMY SCHOOLS, the decisions being made by unaccountable management bodies.

One of these bodies is the VENTURERS TRUST, a front for the SOCIETY OF MERCHANT VENTURERS (SMV) who have been trying to takeover Bristol’s state education for more than a decade. The SMV now manage a series of schools which were once run by the Local Authority but are now apparently their property to do with as they will.

When the SMV took over WITHYWOOD SCHOOL in 2008, they almost immediately changed its name to the MERCHANTS ACADEMY. That is, the arrogant bastards named it after themselves. So the SMV clearly thought they were more important than the traditions of the school, the place or the people of Withywood.

So it is with great irony that we read that another one of the SMV schools is NOT changing its name despite pressure from pupils, parents and the public to do so. Why pressure to change the name? Well, this school is named after MASS MURDERER EDWARD COLSTON, who was involved in the deaths of 20,000 PEOPLE including 3,000 CHILDREN during his time running the transatlantic slave trade. According to a representative of COLSTON GIRLS SCHOOL (CGS), the brand COLSTON represents “outstanding education” and traditions must be must be protected… blah, blah.

Here at The BRISTOLIAN we are not sure how keeping the TOXIC BRAND OF A MASS MURDERER is more important than keeping the name Withywood? But then having seen the Ofsted report on how the SMV’s have fucked up the schooling at the so-called Merchants Academy maybe they want to erase both the name Withywood and the education of its pupils.

One rule for the rich and clearly no respect for us or our traditions amongst the Merchant Venturers.