I lump them together because they are a very powerful combination; but I shall treat them separately as I continue my quest to identify the “Termites” in our Society, the ones standing in the way of necessary change because they are “programmed to build and defend their nests and are unable to move on.” (Revisit Post 1).

I must acknowledge that those who have been promoting Inclusion with legislation in Parliament and an administrative machine to implement it would hotly dispute that they were the Termites. They would accuse people like me of being one, of standing in the way of necessary change.

They would have an argument. That is what makes for the drama in “Death of a Nightingale”. You should read it, if you have not already done so. It puts their case.

Act One Scene 2

James Harrington, the Mandarin from London meets with David Harding, the Director of Education for Wexborough and Gerry Thompson a Special Educational Needs Controller in the regional office of Judy Fotheringham to discuss the closure of Brighouse School. A campaign by parents to keep it open is standing in the way of Inclusion.

JAMES HARRINGTON Good. That’s one of the things the Minister was very worried about. The other, of course, is how you get the show back on the road. We need that. You see I was at the UNESCO conference at Salamanca in ninety four.

Nearly a hundred countries all saying that children with special needs had a right to mainstream education. That certainly galvanised us into action. I’ve never seen Parliament move so fast, and so decisively. Don’t think that the Minister doesn’t realise that change can be a bit painful. He knows that in every good parent there is a Luddite trying to get out. In many cases they like what they have but they have no understanding of the world that we are trying to create for them and their kids. It’s your job Gerry to illuminate them, to show them the way to truth and light.

GERRY THOMPSON I know. I had a really good grounding at my university, under Professor Hopwood. A real visionary.

JAMES HARRINGTON Know him well. He has advised us a number of times.

DAVID HARDING Yes, we’ve used him too for training.

JAMES HARRINGTON Academia has been very supportive. They do know which side of their bread is buttered on. Anyway, the policy of Inclusion could not have a better provenance. Baroness Warnock led the way more than twenty years ago. That’s when it was very enlightened. Now there’s all party consensus. And it has the full support of all the leading disability organisations. Mind has been particularly helpful. Their President Lord Rix pushed hard for it. He and his daughter had a hard time of it, badly discriminated against by the old system. Blunkett, too.

GERRY THOMPSON There’s plenty of other parents that feel the same way. Feel their kids should get an equal chance in a mainstream comp.

DAVID HARDING Of course not all parents agree. That’s the basic problem.

JAMES HARRINGTON People like Gerry will win them over. You just have to. You see the Treasury has made up its mind that there are savings to be made here if they invest in it. You know the figures. Three per cent of children have special needs but they gobble up eight per cent of the total spend on education. That really isn’t equitable.

And in Notes & Quotes I set out the whole of the Salamanca Statement .

The Salamanca Statement

More than 300 participants representing 92 governments and 25 international organisations met in Salamanca, Spain in June 1994 to further the aim of ‘Education for All’. This was to consider what basic policy changes were needed to promote inclusive education so that “schools could serve all children, particularly those with special educational needs.”

THE SALAMANCA STATEMENT: NETWORK for ACTION on SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION Adopted by the World Conference on Special Needs Education: Access and Quality Salamanca, Spain, 7-10 June 1994. Organised by the Government of Spain and UNESCO,

The Salamanca Statement says that:
” every child has a basic right to education
” every child has unique characteristics, interests, abilities and learning needs
* education services should take into account these diverse characteristics and needs
*those with special educational needs must have access to regular schools
*regular schools with an inclusive ethos are the most effective way to combat discriminatory attitudes, create welcoming and inclusive communities and achieve education for all
* such schools provide effective education to the majority of children and improve efficiency with cost- effectiveness.

The Salamanca Statement asks governments to:

* give the highest priority to making education systems inclusive
* adopt the principle of inclusive education as a matter of law or policy
* develop demonstration projects
* encourage exchanges with countries which have experience of inclusion
* set up ways to plan, monitor and evaluate educational provision for children and adults
* encourage and make easy the participation of parents and organisations of disabled people
* invest in early identification and intervention strategies
* invest in the vocational aspects of inclusive education
*make sure there are adequate teacher education programmes

They certainly have a case. But there is a counter argument. Hence the drama of “Death of a Nightingale.”

In essence, did they research it beforehand? (Revisit Post 34 and reference to the recently published findings of Professor Jonathan Shepherd) Or did they promote for “every child” what they would have wanted for themselves without realising that that may not have been what other parents wanted for their children or the children wanted for themselves? Were they living in the real world or were they living in a fantasy-land? Were they just a bunch of well-meaning idealists and ideologues? I have posed these questions a number of times in these Posts.

And if they made the mistakes that are now showing up, the mistakes that have led Baroness Warnock to describe Inclusion as “possibly the most disastrous legacy of the 1978 report”, why did they make them in the first place? (Revisit Post 13)

The Mandarins should have kept them right. That is their job. Yes, make it possible for more children with special needs to be educated in mainstream schools, but not at the cost of vandalising and stigmatising special schools.

I can’t speak for other countries, but in the UK I sense two reasons why this was allowed to come about, one I set out here, the other in “Death of a Nightingale.”

Many Mandarins went to Oxbridge, reading Greats. For the uninitiated that means Latin and Greek. I don’t want to be too disdainful of these subjects. I was lucky enough to get a State Scholarship to Oxford with Latin and Greek from a Grammar School in Sunderland, and I read Jurisprudence, a degree course that I now see was tailor-made for termites.

It was only later in life that I entered the real world. I wonder whether some Mandarins have ever done so or whether, like Academia, they just work things out “in the libraries of their minds.” Yes, they are intellectually brilliant, an elite in fact. But like Asquith and his successors, they are flawed. They are amateurs in world that increasingly needs true professionals, with a care for detail, (Revisit Post 35) and they are “above the battle not in it.”

I shall give you an illustration of this, far away from the world of Inclusion.

Unlike Germany where they are all addressed as “Dr.” engineers have been downgraded in the UK for a long time. They didn’t like it, but they couldn’t do anything about it. Why? After all, engineers created the Industrial Revolution that gave Britain much of its wealth and its international standing. I suggest that it is because the Mandarin class educated in the Classics didn’t rate them. They then destroyed the Polytechnics that trained them intending that children could be as advantaged as they had been by going to a University. In the name of Equality they wanted to treat all children the same way, totally disregarding their different needs and the different needs of Society too. (Revisit Post 4 & 5)

We are paying a heavy price for this. That is why I was happy to endorse ukEdge in my last Post. Those responsible for that website are saying the same thing.

Here is another reason why Mandarins have so often got it wrong. You need to read the lines and between the lines in the following dialogue.

Act One Scene 2

This is at the beginning of the scene that I have already introduced you to.

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM (on the telephone) Yes, I did listen to the repeat of “Yes Minister”. I do admire Sir Humphrey.

James Harrington knocks and enters

JAMES HARRINGTON Are you talking about me?

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM (still on the ‘phone) God has just walked in. I’ll ring you back later. Bye (To James) Hello, good to see you again.

JAMES HARRINGTON Nobody’s ever said I had a divine presence before. Mind you they thought my father had when he was a District Commissioner in the Punjab. But people do turn to me for the occasional miracle. I don’t object to being called Sir Humphrey, but I do have to correct you about Yes Minister. We only like to think we’re wise and knowledgeable. I am not sure we always are.

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM Last night’s programme was really cruel. Did you see it?

JAMES HARRINGTON No, I missed it.

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM It was all about the Dome and Government waste. Hacker was lamenting the fact that the real problem was not the waste of £800m so much as the public view of it. He said the problem was not so much its viability as its visibility. He said it would have been much better if the project had been constructed underground connecting directly with the new Jubilee Line. The spend might then have been almost totally invisible. Then he went on to say that Hadrian was not so ill-advised as to say that twelve million people would visit his Wall in the year of its completion, and that that venture was a good deal more ambitious than the Dome.

JAMES HARRINGTON You really mustn’t allow yourself to be upset by the media. Whenever this arose my father – wise old bird if ever there was one – always said that the Pharaohs weren’t put off their grand design for the Pyramids by carping criticism in the Alexandria Times. I’ll tell you something else. Have you heard the Latin tag “Audi alteram partem”?

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM My Latin’s not very good these days. Doesn’t it mean something like “You have to listen to both sides of the argument”?

JAMES HARRINGTON Pity you didn’t have a classical education. In the civil service manual, it’s translated to mean that “you can drive your car on the wrong side of the road. ” Politicians watch our backs and we watch theirs. They provide the first line of defence to attack. They take the blame. They provide the safety valve for the system. Then ultimately, if the civil service gets it very badly wrong, they lose their seats. It works. Mistakes self-correct … as long as you are prepared to wait long enough.

(David Harding and Gerry Thompson knock and enter.)

DAVID HARDING hope we’re not interrupting.

JAMES HARRINGTON No we’re just acclimatising our minds to living in a very different world from the great British public. It’s just a pity they are not more appreciative of what we are trying to do for them.

……..

DAVID HARDING (with a smile) You know, James Harrington is totally, totally without shame.

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM I don’t agree. He’s probably a bit like me. I’m not immune to shame. Very, very occasionally I do take my conscience to bed with me, but when I do, and it isn’t very often, I leave it on the breakfast table the following morning. We’re always going to be upsetting somebody, not meeting their needs. It’s in the nature of our job. We’re interested in outcomes. Fortunately for us, most of those people who don’t like what we’re doing just sound off in the pub. Our life would be impossible if everyone was like the parents in your school.

GERRY THOMPSON I’m absolutely certain his visit won’t give him any sleepless nights at all. Most likely he’ll go back home, and open a bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild.

DAVID HARDING Well, Merlot Chateau Sainsbury for me. I’m sure you’re right.

GERRY THOMPSON We couldn’t do without people like Harrington. Nothing would get done. I’m sure that fella will go places.

DAVID HARDING In this world or the next? You know I believe his father was high up in the Indian Civil Service. That’s where he must have got his superiority complex. Tell me; is that a photo of your daughter?

Mandarins are “Termites” because they just do not understand although they believe that they do and some, I am afraid, never will.

And what about Lawyers without whom they could not exist, not in such numbers? I shall keep this relatively short.

From the Prologue

You have to be very careful how you use the word “right”. You need fine judgment and, as Professor Hart argued, a sense of fair play in deciding when and how to assert it. It is just as well to remember that while human rights may enable lawyers pronouncing on them to enjoy the fruits of Utopia; they allow the rest of us only a partial glimpse of it. In Professor Hart’s own words human rights are “the prime philosophical inspiration of political and social reform”. Often they are no more than that.

So, when you talk about the “right” to Inclusive Education you should recognise that some will want to assert it and may succeed and thrive. Some may assert it but be disappointed and wish they hadn’t. Some may want to assert it but be denied it. Finally, some may not want to assert it at all but be forced to accept it with no other realistic choice available,
and some may want to assert a different right altogether – the right to go to a special school. Remember that children without special needs have their rights too. This actually summarises how things are.

Act One, Scene 6

Margaret Williamson, the head teacher, is discussing with her friend Joan Errington, the English teacher, why Westborough’s Local Education Authority is pressing her to commend the closure of her school to parents.

JOAN ERRINGTON Some people think that rights grow on trees. Just pass a law and you’ve planted another tree.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Weeping willows, more like.

JOAN ERRINGTON Trees or people?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Politicians are all for human rights, but when it comes to delivering them, ah that’s another matter. There are too many social engineers in politics. They think that all you have to do to change society is to pass another law. You know, human rights sometimes are just dreams, very beautiful dreams, but dreams.

JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, if only it was easy to turns those dreams into reality.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON And when you wake up from your dream, what do you find? Your social engineer has put square pegs into round holes with epoxy glue.

JOAN ERRINGTON That is the nub of it. Some people just don’t realise that one person’s right can become another person’s restriction.

It gives me no pleasure to criticise my own profession and I have no wish to malign it in its entirety. I do not say that all lawyers are termites, but some are. Others are like the late C.N.Glidewell, my pupil master in Manchester and like the members of the Bar I knew in his Chambers. This is how I describe him:

In the Preface of Death of a Nightingale

On the Northern Circuit I was privileged to have as Head of Chambers, and as my pupil master, the late C.N.Glidewell, CNG to everyone who knew him. He was a man with old fashioned integrity. He was also a master of advocacy – particularly good when he showed up the ineptitude of local planners. He also had style. All of this was somehow encapsulated in his choice of car – a Bristol – a prestigious saloon engineered with traditional British quality in its design. In all ways CNG was a cut above the ordinary.

I just hope that he is not a dying breed. Part of my concern is that teachers are not the only ones who, as I write in the Prologue, “feel obliged to do some things they know they shouldn’t be doing, or not do things that they should.”

We really must move on, including the legal profession.

I am now going to give myself a two week break. You too. Please use the time to catch up on all the earlier Posts, and have a go at reading the play … if you have not already done so.

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Or how to recognise a “Termite” when you meet one.

If you have been following these Posts you will know all about my obsession with “Termites”. Again I have to remind you to go back to the very first Post to understand how I came to use this word. Let me give you a new description of the sort of people I am talking about. They are not so much in a groove as in a rut. Leastways their thought processes are in a rut, their instinctive reactions too. Maybe not their careers.

There are two ways you can approach life. You can start, probably at school, with some basic ideas about life. You may have inherited them from your parents. You may have been influenced by your social background, and worked them out for yourself. As your life progresses anything that confirms your early opinion you remember, anything that conflicts with it or challenges it you conveniently dismiss or forget. In today’s world, you delete without reading. I know quite a few people who have done that to emails that I have sent them.

The other way you can go through life is to allow its widening experience to teach you things, more than any teacher ever did or could. The result is encapsulated in the T.S. Elliot quote in the opening pages of “Death of a Nightingale.”

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

TS Elliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding 1942

Be honest with yourself. Which way have you approached life?

I am going to be personal here; critically personal. And I need two Posts to develop this theme. In the first I will deal with politicians and academics, in the second with the civil service and lawyers. I shall be critical of all of them, and with good reason. Death of a Nightingale resonates with these criticisms as does this Blog (Revisit Post 6). Then I have never ceased from my journey of exploration.

So to be fair, I shall start with me.

I shall be honest with you. My early involvement with the Liberal Party started before I reached the age of 20, as a Young Liberal endorsing a Mr. Kitchell as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Sunderland. Subsequently I listened to Clement Davies, Liberal Leader at the time, Lord Beveridge, a great Liberal, by the way, Professor Gilbert Murray, Salvador de Madariaga. Not a bad Liberal pedigree. Yes, I know this well and truly dates me.

For three years I was a full time employee of the Liberal Party at 58 Victoria Street in London, organising its Annual Assembly and servicing its Party Council and National Executive. Then a Prospective Parliamentary candidate for Newcastle North and a member of the National Executive.

I had some wonderful times. I shall never forget sneaking into the count in the Orpington by-election in 1962. I shouldn’t have been allowed in, but that is by the way. I enjoyed some wonderful friendships; some still going strong to this day.

But all of this, as I now see it, was based upon on a serious misunderstanding of very many things.

The nature of politics, for a start, the power game that it is, the debating society, the think tank that it is not. How people are, not how I would like them to be. Their social, cultural and religious diversity. I didn’t really consider that. The hierarchy of their many and varied talents, skills and abilities. Yes hierarchy, unlike egalitarians I am not afraid of that word. I didn’t acknowledge that, still less see its importance, when it comes to education, to develop them, all of them.

The multitude of job opportunities, ever changing to meet a changing world; many of these not needing a University degree yet still affording a good, rewarding and satisfying life, taking a 24 hour, round the clock view of it. It does take 360 degree vision in politicians and educationalists to recognise this. I am not sure it is always there.

I didn’t know about the enormous number of quite different special educational needs. Then I had never even thought about special educational needs.

On a different tack, I didn’t know of the basic selfishness of self, the challenge being to harness it for the greater good. I had no training whatsoever in human psychology.

Forty years ago I could never have written these words about Inclusion that I put into the Prologue of “Death of a Nightingale”:

Social reformers have not always grasped this. I fully appreciate that an international consensus set the wheels in motion, but I suspect that many have looked at this simplistically, seeing it as essentially society’s difficulty not an individual’s and, with the very best of intentions, projecting what they felt in their gut they would want for themselves for everyone else, a not uncommon mistake. Even disability organisations that have done so much to help the disabled may have fallen into the same trap. That is why they may not always have seen the quite different and varying needs that some children and their parents actually have, and a not always pleasant reality they have to deal with every single day. Very simply, some do not want an open door. What they want is a helping hand and the comfort zone of their own company. For them change is a worry and a threat.

I had no understanding of the sheer complexity of absolutely everything.

And I never really understood how the Liberal Party, the once great Party of the Left had allowed itself to be replaced by a Party that was the political wing of the Trade Union Movement.

Only in the last few weeks has this all come together as I read the chapter devoted to Asquith and Lloyd George in “Pistols at Dawn – from Pitt & Fox to Blair & Brown” by John Campbell. Asquith himself not “the last of the Romans”, but “a snobbish, post-Victorian amateur.”

Asquith, his daughter Lady Violet Bonham Carter, her son Mark Bonham Carter, her daughter Laura Grimond, the wife of the Liberal Party Leader Jo Grimond – that great Liberal dynasty that I so respected at the time, intellectually brilliant but politically flawed.

I wrote in the Preface to Death of a Nightingale:

So far as the Liberal Party was concerned, I had walked with Jo Grimond “towards the sound of gunfire”, but I never quite got there – nor, I fear, did he.

Suddenly I knew why. He didn’t actually like the sound of gunfire. In the First World War when the Liberal Party fell apart, Asquith, then Prime Minister wanted to be above the battle not in it. It was all a great Parliamentary debate even the Great War itself. Westminster was his metier. After the passing of time Jo Grimond was his true heir. He was a wonderful orator and a great Parliamentarian, but he was no President Kennedy and certainly no Barack Obama.

That is why the Liberals made their speeches, and I conveyed resolutions earnestly and enthusiastically passed to the appropriate Minister and received their acknowledgement, finally realising that my role was simply facilitating a dialogue between filing cabinets.

Well, the Lib Dems have rejoined the battle in Local Government. Have they done so in the nation’s affairs? Or are they still glorious amateurs? Is the ghost of Asquith still sitting at their table?

Special Educational Needs is a case in point.

I tried to engage with Ming Campbell when he was Leader of the Party. Despite my credentials I never got very far. If I had been offering the Party a cheque for a million pounds I am sure that a door would have opened. It didn’t.

In 2006 I tried to engage with Sarah Teather MP when she was in charge of their education portfolio. While I received a long letter by way of reply, she asserted that appropriate funding was the issue, which I do not believe it is, and she and her Lib Dem colleagues had still not taken on board the facts that persuaded Baroness Warnock to conclude that “possibly the most disastrous legacy of the 1978 report was the concept of inclusion.” (Revisit Post 13 and this website).

I quote in Notes & Quotes

Phil Wills MP, former Lib Dem spokesman for Education, said in the Commons on 20 March 2001: “Working in Chapeltown in the late 1960′s convinced me that unless we could educate the whole community together – wherever they came from and whatever their needs and disabilities – frankly we would breed dysfunctional communities. It is a point of principle to me and my colleagues that inclusive education goes to the heart of the education system.”

Education should go to the heart of an education system, not social engineering.

And fairness to all, not Equality, should be the watchword. Equality is the wrong word. (Revisit Posts 4 & 5).

Hence Margaret Williamson, the head teacher in Act One Scene 3

“Exactly. Meanwhile our great government can’t make up its mind whether we are a part of one large sausage machine, or a lot of small sausage machines, and they keep coming up with more and more paper plans, more and more targets.”

And this little dialogue:

Act Two, Scene 2

Joan Errington, the English Teacher and Eileen Winterton, the chair of governors, discuss Inclusion.

JOAN ERRINGTON … I’m sure none of this sadness would have happened to Margaret if people realised like we do that all kids have very different needs.

EILEEN WINTERTON Well, I’m afraid our old friend Karl Marx is still around in education. People are looking for that elusive level playing field, and with the proviso that no-one actually competes on it.

JOAN ERRINGTON I agree. They are looking for solutions to the world’s problems in the libraries of their minds, not in the classrooms of the real world.

EILEEN WINTERTON Of course it’s not just Karl Marx you know. The Achilles’ heel of the Liberal is naiveté. And, when you don’t know you’re naïve, well it’s highly dangerous.

JOAN ERRINGTON Insanity. King Lear.

EILEEN WINTERTON No, I’d put it another way. You can actually care too much. You can you know, if that blinds you to uncomfortable reality. But going back to our friend Karl Marx, to coin a phrase, Marxism is still the opium of the brainy classes despite its terrible history. And they hate globalisation too. But you can’t turn the clock back. Those people shouldn’t be looking for an old clock. They should be looking for a new compass.

I summed up my views of the Lib Dems a bit cruelly at the end of a parody I wrote some time ago. (Revisit Post 15):

From “Alice in Blunderland”

At this point a very strange thing happened. The small black fly on the wall behind the Mad Hatter’s chair suddenly took off, whizzed three times round the room at great speed, buzzing all the way.

Doormouse opened his eyes. The White Rabbit sat upright with a jolt. The White Rabbit, by the way, is known affectionately as “the politician”. His political affiliations are however unknown. Alice thought he belonged to the Lib Dems. He had taken no part in the proceedings. He had not been asleep like Doormouse, nor had he been fully awake. He had been lost in his daydreams. The sudden buzzing of the fly disturbed his reverie.

“Where am I?” he asked, gazing around. No-one answered. No-one even heard.

For at that very moment the small black fly suddenly turned into a wasp, and stung the Mad Hatter right on the tip of his nose.

As the Labour Party struggles to regain its soul, have the Lib Dems finally got round to reconnecting with their roots? Not my problem.

When I was at the Bar in Manchester, a colleague, Donald Summerfield, later to become Manchester City Coroner, a wise and a perceptive man, said I would be alright because I was a Liberal by conviction. I was not an idealist. I never fully realised at the time the importance of that distinction. I still am Liberal by conviction, but where does that leave me in the political spectrum?

A purveyor of provocative thoughts. In electoral terms, a “don’t know”. A “cockeyed optimist – a dope with a thing called hope.”

All of these, but certainly not a “Termite.” Maybe this can help you to spot some of those who are, especially on the Liberal Left.

To be continued.

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Before I start this Post, and for the benefit of those visiting this Blog for the first time, I should explain my continuing reference to “Termites”. No, I am not paranoid. Yes, I am obsessional. If you visit my first post I explain how I came to use this word in the way that I do.

Essentially “Termites” constitute an unholy alliance of all those who are programmed to build and defend their nests, but are unable to move on. All too often they build empires of paper on foundations of sand. They are aided and abetted by those whose livelihoods depend on them.

In “Death of a Nightingale” I explore in a real life drama how they exercise power. In these Posts I explain it.

This week I am going to talk about money. You can’t get very far without it. The way that it is handled, from the Treasury downwards, has to be a very powerful management tool. It has been a powerful force implementing the policy of Inclusion.

As the good book says “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” Don’t underestimate the role of the Treasury. I quote Elizabeth Appleby QC here. She said this to me a number of years ago when the school I was a governor of was taking her advice.

I have already written that “Death of a Nightingale” explores the area where control should stop and participation should begin. (Revisit Post 32) As you read what follows you may wonder whether the one does stop and whether the other actually does begin.

Act One, Scene 2: Regional office, DfES

James Harrington, the Mandarin from the Department for Education and Skills, is discussing with David Harding, the Director of Education in Wexborough, how the policy of Inclusion can be driven forward through the closure of Brighouse School.

JAMES HARRINGTON People like Gerry will win them over. You just have to. You see the Treasury has made up its mind that there are savings to be made here if they invest in it. You know the figures. Three per cent of children have special needs but they gobble up eight per cent of the total spend on education. That really isn’t equitable.

DAVID HARDING Between these four walls I don’t think Inclusion is going to be a cheap option.

JAMES HARRINGTON Well leading accountants advised us that we could make some real savings simply by reducing the number of Statements LEA’s have to write for children with special needs. Get that down by a third, reduce special school places by the same, and then hey presto you don’t need all those special schools. And writing Statements is a real headache. We’ll have to keep some schools for kids with profound difficulties or very complex behavioural problems, but most can go.

DAVID HARDING Hm. Accountants. Some are just calculating machines on legs. They play with figures and talk about outcomes. They leave us to deal with people and try to meet their needs. They’re just not street wise. They manage us when we should be managing them. The savings won’t be there if we do our job. Mark my words.

JAMES HARRINGTON You may well be right, especially to begin with. The Treasury has agreed to cough up millions to adapt mainstream schools, and we will obviously have to commit ourselves to training. We are currently trying to work out the actual cost now. It’s not easy though. There’s a major study just started.

DAVID HARDING Good luck to it. I look forward to seeing the results. I just hope you haven’t provided them.

JAMES HARRINGTON You’re a cynic. Anyway, just you keep your doubts to yourself. Money is where money needs to be is my motto. We can’t go back now.

“Money is where money needs to be.” Little did I think when I wrote this how true this would be. Billions of £s of it!

“Death of a Nightingale” and its Notes & Quotes provides a case study that validates the findings of Professor Jonathan Shepherd, reported in the Times on Monday 20 July 2009: “Education and criminal justice systems fail to deliver the best results because policies are not researched properly.” See in particular Note 8 “Extracts from Costs and Outcomes for Pupils with Moderate Learning Difficulties in Special and Mainstream Schools 1999.”

No wonder the “Termites” don’t like what I have written. And they won’t like what follows in the same scene.

JAMES HARRINGTON I am not sure that that is the best answer. You have got to win over the parents. I think you need something a bit more subtle. Look at it this way. They have a bird in their hands, and they like it. We are offering them, as they see it, two in the bush. Where’s their next dinner coming from? Not from the bush unless we make their bird look a bit less appetising.

DAVID HARDING I hope you are not going to get me into trouble with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

JAMES HARRINGTON And I hope you are not a covert animal rights activist.

DAVID HARDING Well what are you actually proposing?

JAMES HARRINGTON I am not proposing anything.

DAVID HARDING Suggesting, then.

JAMES HARRINGTON I’m not suggesting anything either. This is a journey of exploration.

DAVID HARDING Or a safari where the wild beasts roam.

JAMES HARRINGTON And vultures fly overhead ready to scavenge their next meal. Come on, it’s up to you how you manage this. Basically if a lot of the kids in this school go to mainstream schools this school is just not going to be viable. You know that. It can’t be making best use of your financial resources. You are just going to have to push things along a bit faster in that direction. It’ll be unpleasant, but really run the School down. When you finally deliver the message that the School has to close there’ll be no great argument.

DAVID HARDING It’ll actually run itself down, as we admit fewer kids to it. Some redundancies will be unavoidable and they won’t be able to deliver the national curriculum.

GERRY THOMPSON The bird’s already beginning to look a bit sick. Their roll came down last year by nine pupils.

And this isn’t good news for Termites either:

Act One, Scene 7: Meeting of the Finance Committee

Frank Jones, chair of finance at Brighouse School, Eileen Winterton, chair of governors, Margaret Williamson, head teacher and John Laver, retired NHS Hospital manager just co-opted to board of governors at a meeting of the Finance Committee.

FRANK JONES … Your experience is going to be invaluable and your network. For a start you can help us understand LEA bookkeeping.

JOHN LAVER Thank you for the welcome. There’s only one thing you need to understand about their bookkeeping and that is that you are not supposed to understand it.

EILEEN WINTERTON If we knew what they knew, they wouldn’t want to know. The more we know what they know, the more we’ll interfere.

JOHN LAVER They do like to keep control of their territory.

EILEEN WINTERTON Are you saying that they think we’re invaders?

FRANK JONES No, they think we’d be intruders, not invaders, on their territory, and on yours too Margaret.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON That’s not very nice.

“A Guide to the Law for School Governors” is clear enough. “Some key decisions cannot be delegated and must be taken by the governing body …. Approving the first formal school budget plan submitted to the LEA for each financial year….”

Or are the decisions made for them?

These are just some of the proposals I made as a governor in 2004.

* The Budget approved by the Governing Body should be included in or attached to the minutes of the meeting where it is agreed. The Budget should anticipate all anticipated income and expenditure, capital and revenue, affecting the School for the year in question.

* No changes should be made to the budget without the agreement of Governing Body recorded in the minutes.

* Indicative Budgets should always be presented to the Finance Sub-Committee and then the Governing Body, as well as to head teachers, in time for its contents to be questioned and, if necessary, amended. It should be presented alongside the budget and the performance up-to-date for the current year.

* The Finance Committee should review at least termly the capital and revenue income and expenditure accounts compared against budget and previous year’s spend with a note of variance at the time. The variance should not be variance against total budget spend for the year as a whole. Any variance of more than say 5% shall be reported to the termly meeting of the Governing Body.

* A system of accruals that is the norm in business accounting should be adopted as soon as possible.

Should I have had to recommend these things? The setting and monitoring of budgets is the key to any enterprise. It should be the easiest thing in the world to organise. It is, after all, simply money IN and money OUT. In my working life I have been involved with many budgets, but when I was governor of a special school I actually had to ask a chartered accountant to explain to me how the LEA had put its figures together.

All of this explains why I wrote this:

The Prologue

There are school governors, and people like them, who are doing valuable voluntary work within the community, but who are deliberately denied the tools to do it properly by those who prefer to do it themselves, but want to make it look otherwise. It is the System that needs looking at, the con in consultation, the charade of partnership, the make-believe, and as a result, the mess of much of it.

I end as I began. Does the Treasury really want to encourage participation? Do they? Does anyone?

I will supply a new test. Over the years I have come across many very worthy charities from bereavement counselling to work with deprived families. Every year each one of them goes out with a begging bowl just to survive. Professional carers have to spend their valuable time trying to raise money. They all had one thing in common. They had no core funding. Larger charities have no such problem, and they don’t worry about it.

This situation is going to get worse not better as public expenditure is cut, and the nation feels itself poorer and the needs become greater.

Around the country Community Foundations help donors identify well run charities to which their charitable donations can be given and they make a genuine difference to people’s lives. They have grown rapidly in recent years. There are now 55 of them, and they can reach 95% of the UK’s population. They already make grants of about £70m every year. The State should provide these Foundations with matched funding to enable them to allocate core funding to selected charities.

It is going to become increasingly evident that the State does not have the resources to make necessary social provision on its own. Some on the Left will be reluctant to acknowledge this. Others on the Right may not even want to think about it.

Social provision should be seen as a working partnership between the State and charities, and the State needs to put its money where its mouth is. It says that it cares.

“Make money work better” would be a good mission statement, especially in times of financial stringency. This would be one sure way.

Likewise running schools needs to be seen as a working partnership between the State and Governors who give their time and their knowhow without payment.

Will they stop the pretence that they are creating partnerships and will they actively encourage participation? I wonder.

Today that is the very last thing in their minds they appear to want to do?

They should read “The highest common factor – Humanity?” in the Prologue to “Death of a Nightingale.” Even better read all of it.

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A short post this time, and budgeting must wait. I commissioned Sprintmail to send the following to 22,600 + State Schools in the UK

http://www.schools-mail.co.uk/death-of-a-nightingale/july/death-of-a-nightingale_email.html

I monitor the response. I don’t think a single one reached its destination.

POLITICAL CENSORSHIP?

Did some Termite give an instruction to put “Death of a Nightingale” or just me in a spam filter for all schools?

Are you comfortable with this thought?

All I need to say.

The Evidence: In November 2008 in the week preceding a Sprintmail mailshot, there were 67 visits to this website and in the week of the mailshot 330 visits. This time there were 264 visits to the website in the week preceding the mailshot, but only 207 in the week of the mailshot. QED.

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“Death of a Nightingale” is a tragedy. It enacts the slow destruction of a very good special school and, in the final scene, it is with the aid of a bulldozer.

In my first draft, in relation to Brighouse School, I called this “an act of civic vandalism.” In deference to those who prefer the English understatement I later changed it to “a real error of judgment.”

The bulldozer however is all too real. 100 special schools have been closed in the last decade. Some maybe had to go, but what about retaining choice for those children for whom mainstream education is not appropriate for any one of a number of reasons?

The bulldozer is also symbolic. It represents the power of the State to roll forward its policies, whether they are right or wrong. It also represents the slow stolidity of a System that is beyond the State, that is more inclined to preserve what is, than to secure what might be or should be.

So when the only constant today is the need for change, in the UK a dire need of a change of an underlying culture, in this Post I ask what on earth you do with those who stand in the way of it. This issue is even more important than the narrower issue of Inclusion and Special Educational Needs, and that will remain the case whatever political party is in power.

I must be personal to make my point.

Before I do so I must invite you to do some homework.

First read the review by Len Parkyn that I quote on the opening page of this website. He would not have written this if he thought “Death of a Nightingale” was bilge. And read my credentials in this website. (Revisit Post 10 Lessons from Living.)

One of my past involvements is relevant here. A number of years ago I was a Director of the British Shops and Stores Association. So I know something about national organisations and what their members have the right to expect from their top executives to look after their interests.

Next , if you have still to read “Death of a Nightingale”, I invite you to revisit Posts 1 and 31 that explain my concern for the pressures that people are subjected to generally to get them to do what they don’t want to do, or not do what they should.

The extracts from the play that I quote illustrate this in one specific instance.

In Act One, Scene 2 James Harrington, the Mandarin from DFES, and David Harding, the Director of Education in Westborough, meet to evolve a strategy to secure the closure of Brighouse School. Previous efforts have been thwarted by a campaign by the parents to keep the school open.

David Harding resolves to press Margaret Williamson, the head teacher of Brighouse School, to side with the LEA in their efforts to persuade parents to go along with the closure of the school.

In Act One, Scene 5 the screw is turned on Margaret.

In Act One, Scene 6 Margaret describes to her friend Joan Errington, the English teacher, the pressure she has been subjected to, the pressure that later leads her to try to take her own life. “Don’t you understand,” she laments, “ I just can’t do it any longer. I can’t look kids in the face. I can’t look my staff in the face, or the governors. And, what’s more, I can’t look myself in the face either.”

So much for fiction. But it is fiction dreamed up out of fact.

I personally witnessed three attempts, all ultimately unsuccessful, by a Local Education Authority to blackball a deputy head teacher’s application for a Headship for political reasons. This is now ancient history, and you must take my word for it. But at the time it made me realise just how vulnerable teachers were to political pressure. This cannot be good or wholesome.

You might think that a teachers’ union would be interested in this even if it did not go along with other things I was saying.

To that end I tried to meet Dr. John Dunford, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders amongst other things to raise this issue with that Association.

15 June 2009

Dear Dr. Dunford

Death of a Nightingale and its Blog

You will see from the enclosed that I have been trying to contact you personally since April, ideally meeting you.

This is partly because I think that what I am writing about may be of interest to your members, especially given the wording of the review in the NUT magazine The Teacher.

Another reason is that I want to ask you quite specifically how I progress the suggestion that I make in the first Post in my Blog. I witnessed at first hand, and on more than one occasion, the way in which a local authority abused its control over the interviewing process for head teachers, and to that extent restricted independent thought and action. To involve the chair of governors in the writing of a head teacher’s reference might provide some check on this.

How can I put this formally to your organisation so that it is properly discussed?

Yours sincerely,

Alan Share

Enc.

______________________________________________________________

From: “Janet Jones”
Date: Mon, June 22, 2009 4:06 pm

Dear Mr Share

John has asked me to email again after receiving your letter dated 15 June. I’m afraid John is unable to meet with you as he has no space in his diary before he goes on annual leave at the end of July

I am sorry that we are unable to help with your request.

Regards

Janet Jones

Janet Jones
PA to Dr John Dunford

______________________________________________________________________________

23 June 2009

Dear Dr. Dunford

Death of a Nightingale and its Blog

I am appalled by Janet Jones’ email reply of 22 June to my letter to you of 15 June.

I do not know whether or not a professional and intellectual curiosity has led you to read Death of a Nightingale. It may be too much for me to invite you to read Posts 1 to 31 of the Blog www.deathofanightingale.com/blog.html which explains the thinking behind it; but I do urge you to read Posts 1 and 31 to appreciate the importance that I attach to the contents of my letter.

Your PA’s response, as it stands, provokes me to dedicate my next Post to it.

I hope that you personally will reconsider whether you should be quite so negative here.

Yours sincerely,

Alan Share

Now admittedly I carelessly miss-spelled his name, which I have corrected here, but since 24 June silence, a silence that speaks louder than words, and which I leave to speak for itself.

I return to my theme. A Government, any Government, will want to drive home its policies. This started in a big way with Margaret Thatcher, and continued with both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. There is an urgent need, however, to restore checks and balances within the system, and to create some new ones. They define where control stops and participation begins.

You ignore participation at your peril. It is the seedbed of initiative, enterprise and a vibrant society.

As Sir Humphrey Plumbton, my alter ego, once said of the workings of power ”In the civil service manual ‘Audi alteram partem’ is loosely translated to mean ‘You can drive your car on the wrong side of the road.’” Therein lies the problem.

(Revisit Posts 22 and 23 to read more of Sir Humphrey’s writings, and read “from Alice in Blunderland”in Post 15)

You too can exercise “the little grey cells.” Think up for yourself some more small things that could actually make a big difference. I, for my part, will look more closely at budgeting in my next Post.

As I said in my first Post, the system badly needs a detox, all of it.

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