Bulletin No. 5 Spring 2000 ___________________________________________________________________________
THE WASTE OF CLOSING BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE.
In 1984 Wolverhampton Council set up a new kind of College. Its brief was to educate the most disadvantaged in society, namely school leavers and adults who had failed at school, and were not eligible for the academic courses provided by the schools and further education colleges of the area. Excluded people also included the unemployed, most women, the disabled and ethnic minorities. Such a college was expected to be democratic, and so began to employ large numbers of women, disabled and ethnic minority staff. It must provide a safe environment for its ethnic minority pupils so it was anti-racist and became the first educational institution in the town where ethnic minority people could feel safe and develop their potential.. It sounds just the sort of College that the government are now demanding. But Bilston Community College (BCC) was set up in 1984, and it met with total and sustained hostility from orthodox education authorities and the local press. In 1999 BCC was closed down.
Educating the most deprived section of the community is both difficult and expensive. Orthodox educational practice is hierarchical; university students are funded at the highest rates, schools teaching 'A' levels rather less, craft students in further education much less, and those without qualifications nothing at all. Such elitism appeared logical and obvious. Only now is it becoming clear that Britain's economic future (not to mention the solution to many of our social problems such as drugs and crime) depends on educating the uneducated. Bilston Community College was in many respects years ahead of its time!
The greatest difficulty in educating the deprived is that for many of them their school experience was so negative that they would not now enter an educational establishment at any price. They can only be educated at courses arranged in clubs, churches, temples etc. and at times convenient to them.
So Bilston Community College started a policy of Open all Hours and organised classes in the community on a large scale..
Such activities in the 1980s brought not support and sympathy but the most extraordinary hostility and venom from orthodox educationalists, the local press, and others, including racists.
THE TALE THE TRADITIONALISTS TOLD
Eventually such hostility became generalised as the Further Educational Funding Council (FEFC) associated BCC with other'failed' colleges. So for more than a year the story was circulated uncontradicted that Bilston Community College was one of a group of Colleges with vast debts and grossly inefficient laced with implications of criminal activity on the part of the management. This version of events was repeated unquestioningly by the local and national press.
AN ALTERNATIVE VERSION
When sufficient people sympathetic to the aims of the College had been rallied to present a more accurate version of events it transpired not only that the 'debts' were not proven and inefficiency demonstrated only after the most disgraceful process of inspection after 200 staff had been removed but that BCC was a unique Community College catering for large numbers of ethnic minority students and there was thus a racist aspect to its closure.
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THE COST OF CLOSING BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE.
Paul Goddard Patel, the financial director of BCC , has established that the cost of closing BCC will be in the region of £65m. Such vast, unproductive expenditures far outweigh the alleged debts of BCC and raises the question of why the College was not allowed to function after its successful restructuring under a temporary principal. The answer is that the FEFC and its collaborators in Wolverhampton were totally committed to destroying the structures of Community Education and removing every person connected with it from Bilston. Patel further established that many on the FEFC's list of so-called failed colleges, had like Bilston, been inspected in the recent past and found both efficient and debt free! These facts are now beginning to percolate through the national press, particularly the Times Educational Supplement.
WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE?
John Kyte who was the first chair of governors of BCC when it was set up in 1984, has compiled a quiz. Here are some of the questions:
Q. What was the financial position at BCC when its last published accounts were issued?
A. Far from being in debt it had a surplus of over £3m.
Q. What was the national level of funding to Colleges in 1995/6. What was Bilston's?
A. National £18-64 per unit. Bilston £16-26. BCC was underpaid £27m from 1993 to 1997
Q. Was the Melia Report recommending the closure of BCC independent of the FEFC?
A. No. Melia had been the FEFC's chief inspector.
For the complete quiz contact us at the address below
'MINISTERS' ALARM AT ENROLMENT FREE FALL.'
Last year instead of reaching the ambitious targets for recruitment to further education student numbers fell nationally.. In Wolverhampton the fall was particularly steep as the Bilston campus became desolated and its annexes sold. The new Wolverhampton College will certainly not reach its target of students for this year. But unlike other Colleges who will lose money as a result, Wolverhampton College will be specially compensated as part of the £65m package for closing BCC. The most important reason for the student shortfall, according to the Times Educational Supplement, is 'the tightening-up of the rules governing course franchising.' But this was an area in which BCC was supremely successful. Yet the FEFC and its Wolverhampton accomplices closed down the College!
THE FOLLY OF CLOSING BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE.
Some of the adverse consequences of closing BCC have been:
1. A catastrophic fall in the opportunities of ethnic minority peoples for education.
The takeover of BCC with its 30% of ethnic minority staff amd unique systems for delivering ethnic minority education by Wulfrun College is the most serious example of institutional racism in education in Britain today and has been reported to the Commission for Racial Equality.
2. The continuing inability of the FEFC to prove that BCC has vast debts but closing it despite this, and running Wolverhampton College with accountants costing £1m a year and a Bilston campus dominated by fear is not only a moral outrage on those displaced from BCC, but is likely to be proved illegal.
3. The continuing errors of the FEFC and its Wolverhampton collaborators such as inviting a homophobe to be a governor and the sorry spectacle of having to re-create the structures of BCC to deliver the policies of this government of ending poverty and disadvantage only emphasises the wisdom of the local countil setting up BCC in 1984.
4. The setting up of the new Learning and Skills Councils based on the model of the FEFC means that these new bodies are institutionally racist based from top to bottom and must be opposed in a campaign which will be both national and local.
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Spokesperson for the Friends is Dr.George Barnsby, 141 Henwood Rd. W'ton WV6 8PJ
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