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Autumn 2000 Bulletin No.7

BREAKTHROUGHS

The FRIENDS are pleased to present this Autumn double-number of the Bulletin. It demonstrates that the policy of those responsible for the closure of Bilston Community College (BCC) of lying low and waiting for the opposition to disappear is not working and they will inevitably be called to account for their actions by the people of Bilston and Wolverhampton.

Regular readers of this Bulletin will know the plot. But it must be repeated both for newcomers and those prepared to look at the case afresh.

The FRIENDS believe that BCC was one of the most important institutions in Britain for ethnic minority education and training. Its unique system of 33% ethnic minority staff enabled ethnic minority managers to negotiate with their own communities to deliver education programmes tailored to ethnic minority needs at their own premises and at times most suited to them. This system also gave ethnic minorities autonomy within the overall white college within which they could argue with each other but know that blacks and Asians decided for themselves. This principle of empowerment of ethnic minorities instead of 'consultation' must apply not only to other FE establishments, but elsewhere in both public and private organisations if equal oppportunities is to become a reality and the widespread institutional racism that exists in most local and national organisations overcome.

The Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), however, was determined to close Bilston Community College (BCC) whatever the cost and resorted to an extraordinary collection of 'dirty tricks' to secure that aim. In this it was aided and abetted by a small but influential group of local people, some of whom constitute the majority of the board of Governors of the new Wolverhampton College. When the FEFC allowed Wulfrun College governors to renege on the proposal that both Bilston and Wulfrun Colleges disband and merge in a new Wolverhampton College and instead allowed the smallerWulfrun College to take over the larger Bilston College it returned ethnic minorities to colonial rule, so to speak. This is the basis of the charge of Institutional Racism we have levelled against FEFC and the College

The opposing view refuses to see any racism in the closure of BCC and relies on outdated complaints and unproved assertions of debts and inefficiency to justify its closure.

The FRIENDS have been hindered in presenting their case by the refusal of the local press to publish their case. This is because the local press itself has been deeply enmired in supporting the closure of BCC. The Express & Star, believe that they were responsible for the closure of BCC, while the editor of the companion paper Wolverhampton Chronicle when last contacted suggested that it was a plot of the 'race relations industry' to describe the closure of BCC as institutionally racist.

Until now the Wolverhampton Adnews has also refused to take the FRIENDS' case seriously, but now, thanks to the further breakthrough by Paul Goddard-Patel in exposing similar treatment meted out to other 'failed' Colleges by the FEFC, and also the fantastic cost of £65million incurred by the closure of BCC, the FRIENDS' case has now re-surfaced in the Times Educational Supplement. Wolverhampton Adnews has, therefore, it seems, decided that the case can no longer be ignored and has printed both the FRIENDS' case and also the case for closing the College.

This at least is evenhanded and the article concerned in the Adnews of 21 September 2000 we print below. In a similarly evenhanded way we have asked the ex-Director of BCC, Keith Wymer, to reply on behalf of the FRIENDS:

Criticism of College Closure

A University professor has condemned the closure of Bilston College as part of a "huge and indefensible" drain on the public purse.

Dr.Stephen Whitehead, of the Department of Education at Keele University, said shutting down the College was unnecesary and had cost taxpayers up to £65million in written-off debts and redundancy costs.

The remarks were made in a paper presented to the British Educational Research Association annual conference at Cardiff University.

The paper was written by Dr.Paul Whitehead and Mr.Paul Goddard-Patel who was sacked as assistant principal and director of finance of Bilston College in February last year.Bilston College was taken over by nearby Wulfrun College following a damning Further Education Funding Council report in January last year.

It accused the college of inventing phantom students to gain extra Government money and building a bizarre world-wide business empire which included importing champagne from Russia and running courses for kazoo marching bands

Dr.Whitehead and Mr.Goddard-Patel said that problems at Bilston were part of a pattern of spectacular failures. They included Matthew Boulton College in Birmingham, where inspectors found major weaknesses in financial management, and Stoke-on-Trent College, charged with serious failures in financial control..

The authors said the problems stemmed from reforms in 1992 as incorporation, when colleges were freed from local authority control and told to handle their own finances and administration.

They were also subject to a form of market forces whereby they received more funding if they attracted more students.

The paper said: "Prior to incorporation, college principals have been primarily responsible for the curriculum. Post-incorporation principals were directly responsible for multi-million pound budgets, premises and the hiring and firing of staff."

At Bilston, the college grew rapidly from 5,000 full-time students in 1994, with a budget of £3million, to 47,500 students in 1996 with a budget of £23million.

Keith Wymer writes in reply:

"Many of the criticisms of Bilston Community College were either false or malicious. No charge of 'phantom' students has ever been substantiated. There was nothing 'phantom' about the almost 50,000 students in 1996/7, both in Bilston and further afield, who participated in Bilston educational programmes. This could have doubled to 100,000 by 2000/2001 if Bilston education had not been devastated. Instead of increased work there has been 500 sackings and the £65m charge to the taxpayer.

Nor did the College operate 'a bizarre world-wide business empire', It formed a partnership with the Russian Education Department

and Moscow businesspersons to establish a very successful College of Banking and Finance. This project was funded by the UK Foreign Office, the European Commission and private funding. It was this ability to tap into many alternative sources of finance and thus allow the College to partially escape the restrictive, elitist, obstructive and arbitrary activities of the

Further Education Funding Council that influenced the FEFC in its decision to deliberately and vindictively close the College.

Bilston Community College's outstanding achievement was to involve in further education people who had always been rejected and ignored. They were enrolled through community partnerships functioning democratically and committed to equal opportunities. The voluntarycommunity organisations in partnership with the College included chapels, temples, trade unions, women's groups, sports clubs, music clubs (eg marching bands), charities supporting the disabled (e.g.Leonard Cheshire and Age Concern) and many others. The principal educational objective was to assist those who had been denied a full secondary education, as a result of racism or other factors which result in rejection."

We might add that the unfortunate fate of the management of Wolverhampton College was to destroy every vestige of community education which had been created in Bilston and then be told by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, that elitist education was out and if poverty and disadvantage is to be rooted out it is the uneducated who must be educated. Unfortunately, Brown did not

tell Blunkett of this about turn! The result is that unless the management reproduces almost all the structures and policies that Bilston Community College pioneered and they destroyed there is no chance of them meeting current education targets.

UNMASKING THE FEFC.

Paul Goddard-Patel's (G-P) work on the costs of closing BCC persuaded Ngaio Crequer of the Times Educational Supplement (TES) to reopen the Bilston Community College file in July. After two weeks correspondence in the TES the matter was put on the Further Education website www.tesfefocus.co.uk where contributions can still be made. Of the many letters of support, one from B.D.Patel of the Bilston Hindu Association and another from Jack Bickley, chair of the Bilston Community Assocation, are so important that we quote them elsewhere. Other points G-P makes besides the £65million cost of closing BCC is the persistent implication that there had been fraud at BCC.. "There is still no evidence, despite the expenditure of perhaps £2million and five enquiries, of any fraud or embezzlement. Indeed, none of the main 'suspects' has even been seen by the police. Surely natural justice demands that the FEFC put up or shut up. If, as seems certain, there is not even a hint of any criminal action, then a statement must be made by the Funding Council to clear the names of those slurred by this disgraceful campaign of innuendo."

It should be noted that G-P who has made the the accountants of the FEFC look silly is by training a biochemist, a distinguished horticulturalist whose family garden in Wolverhampton is open to the public, and father of a multi-cultural family. Not only was he (and the other governors) accused by the FEFC of dishonesty, but also of gullibility in being deceived by a strong-minded principal, and incompetence because he was not a qualified accountant.. The result of the last charge is that he has been replaced at Wolverhampton College by qualified accountants at a cost of perhaps £1million who know all about book-keeping, but nothing about education, and less than nothing about multi-cultural education.

ETHNIC MINORITY VIEWS.

B.D.Patel's letter to the Times Educational Supplement included the following. " Our Hindu Association had a fruitful 20 year partnership with BCC. The College provided premises for our religious, social, cultural and youth activities. It also hosted language classes. Most of our chldren have performed on its stage and taken part in our sports day in its fields. We all have loving memories of the College. Our community was 'adopted' by the

College which became a 'second home' for us. The College has been destroyed for reasons we do not understand."

Jack Bickley, chair of the Bilston Community Association, wrote that it was time that some of the truth was told about the disgraceful politicking by the FEFC and others. BCC genuinely sought to take education in innovative ways into our community. The new College is not so community minded. It omitted to invite Bilston Community Association which represents a wide range of Bilston community groups to consultation on its three year community plan. Is the new college afraid of the kind of community education that Bilston once provided?

DISCONTENTS OF THE STAFF.

When the FEFC played one of the last of its 'dirty tricks' and suggested or persuaded the governors of Wulfrun College not to dissolve themselves as proposed in the Melia Report but to directly take-over Bilston Community College and thus commit institutional racism it was done on the promise that the new Wolverhampton College would be bigger and better than what had gone before. The reality was different. After spending millions of tax-payers money, brought about nearly 400 redundancies of experienced and committed staff, the college last year was only one third of the size Bilston and Wulfrun were funded for the previous year. Nor will this year's targets be met.

The result could quite easily be envisaged. The staff that remain are seething with discontent.

A resolution from the joint trade unions, NATFHE and UNISON, held on 24th May accused the W'ton College management of 'bludgeoning through a restructuring that is causing tremendous stress for members and adversely impacting on services to students and the community.' Specifically,

* continued job losses with nearly 40 staff leaving to add to the 350 plus who had already left the former colleges in 1999

*senior management reneging on agreements reached only last year

*falling morale as staff have seen valued colleagues displaced from posts and leaving 'voluntarily' to avoid further humiliation and stress

*some managers being forced to take pay cuts of more than 25%

*some managers receiving large pay rises

*staff being forced to accept jobs for which management has not issued job descriptions.

*less and less courses being offered in the Bilston area leading to students and staff having to travel, on up to three buses, to take courses previously available locally

*lower than planned progress towards agreed targets of provision.

The sort of response the staff are likely to get is typified by the remarks of the chair of governors (who for many years now has failed to seek a new mandate for his pretensions to represent the industry of Wolverhampton) at the so-called recent Public Consultation meeting when he arrogantly stated that whatever grievances staff had they must put up with; for the past was past and it was not going to be revisited. We shall see!

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Printed and published by the FRIENDS OF BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE whose spokesperson is George Barnsby. He can be contacted at 141 Henwood Rd.W'ton WV6 8P