13/11/2008 by April First.

There has been trouble in the staff room. The handful of teachers who felt that they stood up against the occupying forces, are refusing to talk to or work with the teachers who just carried on as normal during the occupation, obeying orders and doing what they were told. The former group (those who supposedly stood up to Ms Bland and her gang), have now called themselves The Resistance – although I think there was little sign of it during the occupation.

There is even greater problem with a handful of “fraternisers” – the teachers who met up with the occupying forces outside of school, or who worked closely with them in school. Indeed the police turned up today asking for a list of everyone in the school, on the grounds that the houses of some of the “fraterniser” teachers had been daubed with white paint.

A group of revolutionary activists within the school has formed a committee, which seems to be in a continuous meeting in the staffroom, which is demanding constitutional reform. And several teachers who left during the occupation have returned only to find that their jobs have been taken by others who are among the “fraternisers”. There has been vigorous debate, heated exchanges and a certain amount of pushing and shoving which has greatly amused the pupils.

Overall it is a trifle horrible in the staffroom, and seems as if virtually no one is talking to anyone else. However rather amusingly the teachers are so wound up in their own world, none of them seem to recognise that a significant part of the undermining of the activities of Ms Bland and her coterie took place in the school office. I’m actually rather proud of that.

On the downside they all come into the office and talk to us all day long, just to get away from the in-fighting in the staffroom.

In their defence those who worked in the school and co-operated with the occupying forces say that by not doing anything to annoy those who wanted to implement the New Tactic, and the Norman Tradition, say they were “biding time”, to allow a rescue to be mounted by the Department of cushions and soft furnishings.

It seems like a bit of a tall story to me.

There was no sign of Havoc Blythe today. I do hope the power hasn’t gone to his head. I’m still waiting to find out what he meant by the painting and the books being at the heart of the issue.

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12/11/2008 by April First.

We gathered in the head’s study at noon for a meeting called by Havoc Blythe. Janice, Binky, Bodger, myself, and HB. Somehow we are “the team” – the people at the heart of the affair. Which is fine but I still have no idea what is going on.

“It was the pictures and the library books,” said Havoc Blythe. “Everything else was a blind – the stuff about the Norman tradition, calling everyone sir or ma’am, smiling in the corridor. Everything. The whole issue was the pictures and the library books.”

We waited patiently for a further explanation. “Nothing else made any sense – not in terms of Putin and the rest of the Academy team suddenly leaving. Why should they leave when they were getting everything sorted?”

“But they weren’t getting it sorted,” said Binky. “Everytime they tried to start a new surveillance technique Bodger stopped them. All their cars blew the tyres when they told us to carry out the bleepers.”

“But the point is,” said Havoc Blythe with what to me was just a little too much exaggerated patience, “we were spending all our time on the wrong thing. April said that the pictures were the one nice thing Ms Bland and her gang did in the school. Which is what tipped me off. With the old Academy team out of the way what would we do?”

“Leave the pictures up, put the books back, and return to the school to the previous status quo,” I ventured, rather pleased with my analysis.

“So everything was subterfuge so we never looked at the pictures?” asked Bodger.

I think Havoc Blythe was enjoying this.

“And…” All of us said it together. HB had had his moment, we wanted to know what was what.

“Put up a painting and what will a pupil or student in the school do?”

“Either deface it with graffiti, or else just put grubby paw marks all over it,” said Binky showing a fine and detailed inside knowledge of young person behaviour.”

“And the school encouraged more graffiti by having a graffiti issue. The whole notion of using a phrase from a 30 year old paperback was far too bizarre for it to be real graffiti,” said Bodger, smiling in a way that I have noticed he has when he has made a connection.

“So they put up the pictures, and the pictures are coated in…” HB paused and we waited.

And waited.

“In…” I said.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “It’s at the labs now, we should know tomorrow. But that is the key. So with the pictures being removed even as we speak, we’ll have the walls washed down tonight and we should be back to teaching as usual tomorrow. Meanwhile all the removed library books were put in store, and I only just go there in time to stop them being put back on the shelves. We are removing those for tests too.”

“And you will tell us what has been going on?” I asked.

“Promise,” he said. “What do you think of my new office?”

We went back to work.

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11/11/2008 by April First.

I am in deepest shock. 

I am utterly aghast.

I simply cannot believe it.

Mr Fixham has told us to “carry on as usual”.

As I said to Havoc Blythe, Janice, Binky and the rest – we have just found out that our school has been occupied by some group of nutters calling themselves an Academy.  They have now all suddenly left – and we still have no idea what their great scheme was or is.  A significant number of people in the school “carried on as usual” during the occupation without batting an eyelid even over the requirements to record the children’s race – and now the Deputy Head (who is calling himself the Acting Head) has said, “carry on as usual”.

The feeling in the office – and for once I think this is reflected in at least part of the staff room – is that we would like to know what happened, how it happened, who let it happen, and also why it was left to the office staff, with the support of Bodger and Havoc Blythe, to operate any form of resistance.  In fact, now I look back on it, we were the Resistance.  The capital R is correct in this situation.

Of course some teachers took Mr Fixham at his word and came straight into the office and asked me to photocopy some pages for them in the next half hour, at least five registers clearly had errors in terms of recording who was in school and who not, and three other teachers popped in to use our phone for a “private call”.

I was beginning to lose my normal calm and cool “I can cope with anything” nature, when Havoc Blythe popped in with one of the works that has been adorning the school’s corridors, of art under his arm.

“That was the one good thing the last regime gave us,” I said when I saw him.  “You aren’t taking that away are you?”

“I am just a little suspicious about it,” he said.  “I’ll have it back by tomorrow.”

And with that he left.

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10/11/2008 by April First.

The weekend was one of intense discussion on the issue of what has happened at our school. Somehow a group of people has moved in, taken over the school, changed it in what many of us thought were the most appalling ways, and then just as suddenly moved out.

And by and large we let it happen. True some of us fought back, reversing their computer systems, and being bloody minded to Ms Bland, but even so – some of the things that have gone on have been awful, and no one really stood up to the managers who took control.

Some of those who met at Blakes coffee shop on Saturday morning and in the Toppled Bollard in the evening felt we should go back to the local authority and ask them what they were playing at, allowing such people in to run the school. Others felt that by and large we should look at ourselves, and ask why we let it happen.

Only a handful – Havoc Blythe, Bodger, Binky, Janice and myself – argued for a different approach. We wanted to know something very simple: what were Ms Bland and her team really up to? Can we put them down as a bunch of fanatics who wanted to re-write history, or can we see them as something else?

Bythe time we got together in Janice’s house on Sunday we had evolved our thinking further.

We are all used to cock-ups in school. The teachers who bring in the photocopying at the very last minute, the senior managers who ask for a set of reports “by tomorrow” when there is no reason why they shouldn’t have given us a week’s notice, the white-boards that are bought in and never used for months – and then suddenly needed only to find a plug is missing.

All this is what we see every day – and which we all wish was not there. But the takeover of the school was something we had not seen before. Something that was very planned – something that almost used the general chaos of the teachers and managers as a way of getting in.

We all agreed – we need to know exactly who they were, and what they were up to, before we go any further.

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09/11/2008 by April First.

Friday

They have gone.  All of them.  

Ms Bland, Mr Putin, and the whole gang who have been running the school.   Their offices have been cleared out, there are no emails from Ms Bland, no instructions.  

Mr Fixham appeared in the office, told us that he was taking over, and asked us to carry on as usual.

Bodger and Havoc Blythe came in and worked on the school’s central computer system for ten minutes before declaring it “clean” and saying that we could use it.

At midday, Mr Fixham sent a message saying that all rules and regulations issued under the previous regime were no longer valid.   “For example,” the message said, “it is not compulsory to call each other sir or ma’am.  Books which have been removed from the library and put in store can be returned to the shelves, and records which link pupil’s academic ability to their race are to be destroyed.”

Then after detailing other aspects of school life that were to “return to normal” in a moment of rare humour the note ended by saying that, “although all such regulations from the previous regime are rescinded, and although the regulation requiring everyone to smile while in the school buildings is included in this, it was perhaps the one positive achievement of the occupying forces, and anyone who wishes to smile at this juncture can be assured they will not be punished.”

We spent much of the rest of the day in debate.   This was the first time that anyone had acknowledged that the school had been “occupied”.

The question was, by whom?   And why?

And what now?

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07/11/2008 by April First.

A delegation of parents arrived today asking to see a Mr Berlusconi .  I pointed out that we did not have such a person but they would not take no for an answer.  I tried calling this term’s head – the rarely seen Mr Putin - but he was out for the day at a meeting of the Rhododendron Committee or some such group, and the other managers including Ms Bland were all in a meeting of the Forensic Disability Group.

So I got Derek, the Site Manager and he took over – sitting them all down in the reception area.  Derek always copes.

Then Bodger sent across an email asking us to look in Miss Sallyband’s room on the CCTV – and there she was with her year 10 class and what she seemed to be doing was (if I understood the lesson correctly) recreating a dodo from a scrap of DNA she had taken from the stuffed dodo in the natural history museum, with her year 10 class.

Eventually tiring of the programme I picked up the report on absentees for last week.  I had to run it twice to make sure it was correct.- we seemed to… well “losing” is the only word I can use… we seem to be losing pupils and students.  And not just one or two, but lots of them. 

It is not that they are taking days off here and then, as usual.  They are taking days off… and then never coming back.

I showed the rest of the team.  We began to wonder where on earth they were going.

And even more extraordinarily – Ms Bland and her management committee seems not to be doing anything about it.

We looked at each other.

And looked again.

What is going on?  Are the pupils at home?  Or on the streets?   (We thought not because the police would have been on to us). 

We made notes to get onto the parents tomorrow.

As we left  there were problems at the school gate.  What seemed to be a missile launcher on a huge articulated lorry was parked  opposite the car park exit.  I just hoped Bodger was not playing with electronic gizmos at the moment I drove past the thing.

It was not until I got home that I started to wonder if Derek was still entertaining the parents – I certainly hadn’t seen them  leave.

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