07/12/2008 by April First.

Havoc Blythe passed on a briefing to us which basically says that the attack on Ofsted is being broadened – their inspection of social services is being called into question. It’s not our show, but nice to know we are not fighting them on our own.

We had further debates on the issue of our mission statement. In the end we decided that it would be to “prepare pupils and students for the real world”. Our prime task therefore would now be to agree what the real world really is, and then prepare everyone for it.

“There are only two problems that I can see,” said Binky as we sat in the office at lunchtime.

“First, how do we define what the real world really is all about? Second, how does anyone teach that?”

We agreed that those were problems, and suggested that we meeting in the Theory Café for coffee tomorrow at 11 to work an answer out.

Later the news came through that several of the people behind the Norman Tradition had successfully applied to the Dept of Cushions and Soft Furnishings to open up a series of Academies across the country, while several other members of the group had set up private companies that were bidding for licences from Ofsted to inspect schools.

We asked Havoc Blythe how this could be happening, given the problems we had had, He shrugged. For the first time he looked a little tired.

Mrs Marchmount announced that she was now free of both the toxoplasmosis parasite (which she insists of calling the oxo thing) and the copy-cat parasite (citing the fact that she never went out to buy any trainers.) We congratulated her on her success, and asked how her dating was going. She tapped the side of her nose and refused to say anything. How times change.

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05/12/2008 by April First.

The attack on Ofsted has started with a series of memos to MI5, and simpler versions (because they are not very bright) to the Dept of Cushions and Soft Furnishings. We are also preparing some leaks to go to the press. The message is the same throughout – Ofsted inspected our school while it was in chaos, and while money was being lifted from our funds through illegally set up companies owned by the Academy sponsors. Ofsted said we were fine, everything was fine, the Academy was fine, the money was fine. Now we have proven otherwise and we would like a spot of accountability.

The Fraud Squad called to say they were rather busy investigating something to do with the banking sector. Apparently the banks are still paying huge bonuses to the men and women who caused the collapse of the system and the end of capitalism.

MI5 said they couldn’t do too much because someone had left a memory stick with the personal details of the entire Kingdom on a train somewhere, and they wanted it back. They also asked, rather hopefully I thought, if we had seen it.

So once again the world has to be saved by our brave little band of desperados. We sent emails to all the companies we had found that had siphoned money out of the school using anagrams of the headteacher’s name and said we would have the money in our account by Monday next or else we take action. Oh and by the way we know about the toxoplasmosis parasite, and we’ll use it on them if they don’t pay up.

At break and lunchtime the pupils and students began a series of games involving throwing trainers at each other. As Havoc Blythe pointed out, “the copy-cat parasite must be wearing off.” A significant number of staff were off today, and it appears that every hospital that has tattoo removal lasers is booked up for the next three months with people from the school trying to undo that which they have done on their wrists.

The Head of Sport still denies she knows anything of it all. Havoc Blythe suggested she take early retirement (although she’s only 31).

A new school’s admission code came out today through which we can apparently tell parents to respect the school’s ethos. I asked Janice what our ethos was. “Total chaos, fraud and deception,” she said if the last two terms were anything to go by.

“Sounds a bit like the real world,” I said, thinking about the collapse of capitalism which had occurred during the same period. “Do you think we could be training the bankers of the future?”

“Will there be bankers in the future?” she asked.

We thought about it, and in the end sadly agreed that probably there would be. Our duty, we concluded, was to make their lives as difficult as possible.

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04/12/2008 by April First.

Wednesday

The recently appointed head of sport turned up again, and claimed to know nothing about what over half the men in the school had her date of birth tattooed to their wrists. She also denied all knowledge of what most members of the school were doing walking around with brand new trainers, while taking no additional exercise.

I called MI5 and she was taken away for questioning.

In the hunt for the missing millions I went to ask the head of business studies how we could find out what had been going on financially under the old regime that previously ran the school, but he had no idea. In fact he seemed to know nothing at all about running a company.

So Janice and I started to search new company registrations at Companies House that had anyone on the board of directors who was until recently a teacher at the school.

We started to find them after 20 minutes. A dozen or more companies with directors named Mr Nitup, Mr Pintup, Mr Tupin, Mr Tinput…

I thought these financial crooks were supposed to be smart – and maybe they are but not smart enough to avoid having our ex-head put an anagram of his name down on each list of directors.

I gave the details to Havoc Blythe, and he forwarded them to the Fraud Squad. It remains to be seen if we shall get the money back.

I felt this was a good day’s work but Havoc Blythe wanted more blood.

“Ofsted,” he said.

“Ofsted?” we queried.

“During the previous regime Ofsted inspected and gave the school a clean bill of health, saying that the finances of the school were in excellent shape and being well managed. In fact, as fast as you two” (he meant Janice and I) “were pumping money in to the school from all sorts of strange sources, Putin and his gang were removing it into their fake companies.

“If Ofsted had said nothing about this, one could have excused them – they are not financial inspectors or auditors. But for them to say everything was fine, when the opposite was true, is just ludicrous. We go on the attack.”

I have never seen him so animated. He even ran his fingers through his hair.

“Can we start tomorrow?” I asked.

He agreed and calmed down. Tomorrow we attempt to bring down Ofsted.

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03/12/2008 by April First.

Tuesday

So the news is out.   The government has ordered an inquiry into a sponsor of academy schools which is accused of mismanaging contracts worth millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

They don’t mention our school by name of course but that’s what the educational papers are saying.  Nothing about the parasite introduced into the food, nothing about the way the school was run by the last regieme, and nothing about the as yet unexplained new copy-cat behaviour which is making most of the school buy new trainers and have the birth date of the head of sport tattooed on their wrists.

The Department for Cushions and Soft Furnishings is “investigating concerns”.  No mention anywhere of our school’s name, or of those of us who valiantly fought off the perpetrators of these outrages. 

Instead we got a note from the Department to say that they are concerned that we have been using government funds to set up establish subsidiary companies which filtered the money out of the school.

And separately Mr Putin and most of the staff who have left following the exposure of their criminal activities, have now appealed to a public employment tribunal over their “dismissal”.   

In a statement Mr Putin said, “I have serious concerns about the running of the administration within the school, and about its finance and governance.   There is a missing link between what the school is reporting in its own accounts and the amount of money provided by investors and the state. 

In a separate matter it appears that the Head of Sport has vanished, leaving most male members of the school in dismay.  However I did overhear some pupils look at the new trainers they had been carrying and asking each other why they had wasted their money on trainers.

At the daily meeting of the executive committee Binky asked if we had looked for subsidiary companies.  I was ashamed to say I hadn’t thought of that, but Havoc Blythe was very supportive and said he should have thought of that.  We start the hunt for the missing millions tomorrow.

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02/12/2008 by April First.

Monday

Janice and I undertook a review of the list of teachers that we have “lost” during the past two terms, and having compiled our list we sent it to the Dept for Cushions and Soft Furnishings to see if they knew what had happened to these people. We also included a warning that some of them might have contracted that toxoplasmosis parasite, or one of the other, as yet unidentified parasites that causes the infected person to copy everything going on around him/her.

We got a standard email back (they never reply personally I’ve noticed) attaching a report from the General Teaching Council for England. It said they would run our list against their list and give us any matches.

I doubted that we would hear anything, but within half an hour we got two matches for teachers who were banned for drink driving offences, five for drug taking, and three for being found guilty of fraud. Additionally there was one for possession of an illegal firearm, one found guilty of an offence involving violence, and another who was inside awaiting sentencing as a result of a manslaughter charge.

I was so surprised I emailed the GTC back and asked them if they were doing anything about this increase in bad behaviour out of schools by teachers, and they referred me to a press release they had put out on the subject. It seems their view is that “teachers have always misbehaved”. It is just that “we are all these days a bit more aware of this”.

Then five minutes later Havoc Blythe slithered in saying that he had just had an email from the National Assn of Acting Head Teachers (of which he is apparently automatically a member) saying that someone in this school was making enquiries about teachers and their behaviour, adding that the union’s official line is that if we go around asking our heads and teachers to be saints, we will have difficulty recruiting anybody at all.

“So what’s our position on this?” I asked him,

“Our line is the government’s line,” he said with a lovely smile. (Goodness, did I just write, ‘lovely smile.’ This pro-HB feeling is getting out of hand.) “Anyone found guilty of offences against children is unfit for teaching. But there is no ruling on other offences.”

“So if you confiscate a child’s mobile phone because it is being used in the classroom during a lesson, and then forget to give it back, you are guilty of an offence against a child and should be removed from teaching,” said Janice, showing a vindictive side that I have not noticed before.

“But if drive too fast out of the staff car park and knock me over and kill me, and subsequently get done for manslaughter, you can carry on working here,” she concluded.

“That’s more or less it,” said HB cheerfully. “At least that’s it according to the unions. The government seems to be taking a different approach, in that it won’t have drug dealers in the school, even if they can prove they don’t sell to the children. Which is why we are running out of teachers.”

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01/12/2008 by April First.

Weekend

The meal with HB was, quite simply, delightful. Exquisite food in a restaurant by the canal about ten miles out of town. I had not even known it existed, and the place was pack How did Havoc Blythe ever get a table?

He told me how much he owed me for my support in the school throughout these last two terms, how I had never once let the powers that be grind me in the ground, and I have never given up fighting.

“The trouble is,” I said by way of reply – which is what I do when someone speaks to me, that is, I normally reply, “the trouble is, much of the time I wasn’t working to plan. I didn’t try to undermine Mr Berlusconi and all he was doing – it is just what I am. I didn’t think Janice and I were doing anything special when we refused to bow down to teachers and do their photocopying at a moment’s notice when they could have asked us a week earlier if only they had been organised – I think we just got annoyed because they were treating us like second class citizens. And I didn’t like the way we appointed the wrong person for the job of librarian…”

“And that’s the point,” he said. “You fight back against those who treat you with contempt – which is really good in itself. But you have a natural instinct concerning what is important and what is right. You also know that the school can’t run without an efficient administration – and that is what most teachers don’t get.”

“I think most administrators know how important the office job is,” I said. “It would be hard not to understand that when working in the school office.”

“That’s true,” he agreed. “But what you do is fight back. You believe the administration is worth fighting for and you fight. All the way through you’ve done that, which is why we still have a school, rather than an organisation that churns out thousands of risk takers.”

“On the other hand we do seem to have a lot of copycats now walking around with the date of birth of the head of sport tattooed to their wrists.”

“But you are still fighting, looking, questioning, investigating,” he said. “That’s what makes you special. Along with the fact that you are extremely beautiful.”

There was an awkward silence, until I said, “I bet you say that to all the administrators you know.”

“Not all,” he said. “Most, but not all.”

And we laughed, and the moment passed, leaving me even more bemused about Havoc Blythe than I have ever been.

On Sunday, Janice was on the phone at 10. “I didn’t want to call earlier, just in case…”

I expressed my horror that she should think of such a thing between myself and HB. We agreed to meet at the Theory Café in an hour.

I gave her the rundown of my evening, and we pondered it together. Janice picked up a napkin and wrote down a set of questions.

1. Who is he really?
2. What makes him tick?
3. Is he heterosexual or gay or a-sexual?
4. Does he live with his mother?
5. How come that he became acting head so quickly? Does he have friends in high places?
6. How long is he gong to stay in this position?
7. Does he really work for MI5 as “Call” suggested?
8. Did he ever go out with Binky?
9. Does he ever wear jeans and a t-shirt?
10. What do I feel about him?

We were unable to answer a single question.

We could have gone on, but Havoc Blythe walked in, and Janice blew her nose on the napkin and got biro marks all over her face.

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