I learned with interest this week that you are the chairman of the Commons all-party further education group.
It would seem that for Bilston Community College events have now moved full circle. From being the College that was deliberately and vindictively closed by the Further Education Funding Council and this endorsed by the Learning & Skills Council it now seems that only the methods pioneered by Bilston are likely to meet learning targets for 16 to 19 year olds and also empower ethnic minority groups to be equal.
The unsurprising failure of Wolverhampton City College to meet targets for 16-19 year olds has led the FRIENDS to request representation at the enquiry initiated by OFSTED and to claim that until the methods initiated by Bilston Community College are restored these targets will never be met. (See document enclosed The Proposed Ofsted Enquiry into the Failure of 16-19 Education in Wolverhampton.)
What we would ask your group to do is to monitor that the FRIENDS are represented at this enquiry.
This is because the FRIENDS are still being discriminated against by he deliberate failure of bodies to respond to complaints. So that we protested at the recent inspection that took place at Wolverhampton City College on the grounds that it might well involve Inspectors who had conducted the disgraceful inspection at Bilston when that College was declared the worst in the country. Certainly the lack of regard for ethnic minority experience and failure to disclose the ethnicity of its work force is a serious matter with regard to that most monstrous of all quangos, the LSC, which ought to be disbanded and education handed back to the localities.
There is also concern that general ethnic monitoring is now being neglected and we take very seriously the complaint of Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, that Institutional Racism is now being neglected.
I think that's enough for the time being. Please let us have a prompt reply.
Dr. George Barnsby (Spokesperson & Whistleblower) 10 June 03