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Serial incompetence at council’s education department over Rothesay Joint Campus should see sackings

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Rothesay Joint Campus – which houses the former Rothesay Academy and Rothesay Primary School – has been the subject of three serious formal complaints in three years – all upheld.

These have been:

  • a Disability Discrimination issue;
  • what is known as a ‘Section 70 case’, under the Education [Scotland] Act 1980, which is adjudicated by the Scottish Government and concerns statutory duties which a local authority has not carried out – upheld in the Spring of 2013;
  • a Child Protection complaint to the Ombudsman for Public Services [the SPSO] – the most recent complaint, upheld in November 2013.

This last issue – which was a complaint about the failure properly to address a complaint by a parent about inappropriate sexual comments made to a 14 year old girl by a teaching assistant – was, in September 2012, brought to the attention of the council’s Head of Service, Carol Evans [Carol Walker whose failure to produce competent school closure proposal papers was a marked feature of the 'school wars' of 2010-11].

Having failed to get the school to act, the parent in question made her complaint directly to Mrs Evans at that stage. But in April the following year, 2013, the local newspaper, The Buteman, reported the matter and parent’s concerns that nothing had happened in the seven months since her session with Mrs Evans. She felt, with good reason, that her complaint was not being taken seriously.

During that same period where nothing was happening, the Section 70 case was proceeding, with the finding of the Scottish Government going against the council, which in March 2013 had to apologise to the parents of a different pupil for failing to carry out their legal duties in respect of that pupil.

Any non-complacent department would have been on to the sexual impropriety issue as soon as they became aware of it. And this department should have been doubly keen to do so, to retrieve its own reputation while already under investigation by the Scottish Government for a Section 70 failure in delivering its legal obligations; and to fullfil meticulously its scrutiny and protective responsibilities to young people,

But not Argyll and Bute Council’s education department.

It remains a moot point as to whether the council would have done anything but try to bury this matter by inaction, had The Buteman not correctly brought it to public attention.

It is incomprehensible that any head teacher and any member of an education authority would not activate all proper procedures at once in response to any question of sexual impropriety by an employee to a minor in their care.

In this case, according to the Ombudsman’s findings,  the Head Teacher had not reported the matter either to Social Work or to the Head of Service – and that was the core reason for his finding against the council’s education authority.

In this case too, the authority’s Head of Service herself appears to have been dilatory in her response when the parent of the pupil concerned complained direct to her about the matter. The parent then had no recourse but to go to the Ombudsman.

Here there are two primary derelictions of duty: that of the Head Teacher and that of the Head of Service.

In the Head of Service’s case, knowing of two other contemporary serious complaints about matters in the Head Teacher’s management of the school, it is quite extraordinarily complacent for immediate action not to have been taken in this Child Protection case.

This school has clearly been a less than trustworthy establishment for some time. No responsible authority would have let this situation run on to the point where a fourteen year old girl was subject to the sort of abuse that was the cause of the original Child Protection complaint.

A disclosure process will certainly have been carried out in respect of the teaching professional responsible, prior to his appointment. If this process was properly executed by all concerned, it is unlikely that someone capable of such proscribed and unprofessional conduct would not previously have shown any sign of this tendency in other aspects of his life and work.

Where the protection of young people in the legal care of a local authority is concerned, there has to be the most absolute rigour in the clearance and supervision of those who will work with them.

There were clearly weaknesses in these areas in this case and it was a minor who paid the price for them.

Both the Head Teacher and the Head of Service remain in employment. Both ought to have gone in the light of this matter.

The trust of children and parents in those who come into contact with pupils during their school days must be absolute and must never be betrayed. This has not been the case at Rothesay Joint Campus and the council’s education authority has been effectively judged by the Ombudsman to have been less than adequately concerned to deliver the required standards of trustworthiness and scrutiny.

The buck stops at the top, and later in November 2013, following the Ombudsman’s judgment in this specific case, Cleland Sneddon, Executive Director of Community Services and Director of Education, came to talk to the Parent Council at the Rothesay school.

He disarmed his audience by admitting ‘We got this wrong’. But what else could he have said with any credibility? This was a signal failure at the heart of statutory obligations for care and trust. It was not a typo in an official paper.

An acting Head Teacher has been brought in from somewhere else and seems to be successful in what he is doing. Parents do not know how long he will be there.

The Head Teacher has been seconded to a desk job elsewhere – with the paper thin face-saver insisting that this has nothing whatsoever to do with her proven shortcomings. The fact is that the Child Protection failure alone – never mind the cumulative impact of three formal complaints in three years, all upheld – was a sacking matter and she has not been sacked.

If she had not seen the need to up her game after the first complaint was laid and upheld; and if she put her own interests before those of a potentially abused young person in her care in not following the due reporting procedure in the Child Protection case – how can she be trusted as a Head Teacher in any other school?

And might she even be brought back? It has to be unlikely but parents do not know.

The Head of Service has been lax in the extreme in her response to this latest complaint; and in not taking seriously the indicative evidence of a school serially failing its pupils in matters of its most basic responsibilities.

She ought to have gone after her dismally unable performance with the 26 flawed school closure proposals of 2010-11, which needlessly subjected 26 rural communities to the most frightful and prolonged stress. But she vanished in the shadows of the end of that debacle.

The other Cheshire Cat who slid out of sight in that morass was Mrs Evans’ boss, Cleland Sneddon, who was ultimately accountable – and who was personally responsible for the non-compliance of the proposals with the requirements of the 2010 Schools Act and for much of the manipulated evidence presented to confound unwary elected members.

Mr Sneddon has recently presented a hilariously Mills & Boon fictionalisation of these events as ‘evidence’ to the Scottish Parliament’s Education Committee. For Argyll has shown that this is ‘evidence’ abuses fact to the point of evidential criminality.

He should have gone at the point where every one of these flawed proposals had to be withdrawn by the council – after the widespread crisis they had caused across Argyll and the Isles and after the considerable cost the process had inflicted upon the public purse.

He too remains in his job and the laissez faire culture he has supported in the education authority is directly responsible for failing the pupils and parents of Rothesay Joint Campus. Playing ‘Honest Joe’ in the wake of a serious failure and trying to charm your way out of it comes nowhere near what is required.

A profound problem with this sort of behaviour and this culture is that it trades exploitively on the instinctive passivity of small rural communities in Argyll when faced with council authority.

Parents are afraid to complain about a failing school because:

  • their children might be made to pay for their stance;
  • they themselves might become the focus of dispute in their small tight knit communities;
  • their own job might be at risk – a factor as like as not with the council the major employer in the area [never forget that a parent may also be a council employee];
  • their own or a relative’s business might be penalised in retaining or bidding for council contracts – with the council the most powerful source of business in this economically declining area – and known for its evidenced culture of vindictiveness [never forget that a parent may also be a contractor].

Staff in schools are equally afraid to speak out for fear of their jobs and their futures. Even when they are also parents, the imperative of silence is almost universally evident and they are overtly reminded of this.

The Rothesay community is divided on the school issue – between those who are not prepared to accept what has been happening and those who feel it’s better not ‘to make trouble’

Small communities need to mind a lot less than they do about being polite, about being respectful, about accepting what they are handed down without question. They need to be a lot less fearful.

When crisis point is reached, they can be magnificent – as they were during the school wars, in their resourcefulness, determination, capability and spirit.

But if they asserted themselves and their rights as necessary and as a matter of course, standing up to the bullying and the threats together, in solid, mutual support – they could change a lot.

If this ever happens, it will take time – and we all know how cautious is Argyll time.

In the meantime, surely the serial failures with Rothesay Joint Campus must be a matter for Education Scotland and possibly for Audit Scotland?


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