email to OFSTED criticising inspection of Wolverhampton City College

George Barnsby

From:   George Barnsby < barnsby@blueyonder.co.uk>
To: < d.bell@ofsted.gov.uk>
Cc: < info@cre.gov.co.uk>
Sent:   26 June 2003 10:32
Subject:   16-19 Education in Wolverhampton.

FRIENDS OF BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE
141 Henwood Rd. W'ton WV6 8PJ. 01902 751888

Dear David Bell.

26 June 2003

Thank you very much for letting me have your report on 16 to 19 Education in Wolverhampton.
I must say I am gobsmacked ( I think that is the modern word) by its contents. I did not think any report on Wolverhampton would be presented which totally ignores the ethnicity of students in the city. But that is the reality of the Executive summary of the report by Keith Abbot HMI of the inspection of Wolverhampton City College of 20-31 January 2003. Nor is there any mention of ethnicity of staff at the College. It is clear that the decision of FRIENDS to boycott the inspection of the College and refusal to accept any report concerning the inspection has been more than justified.

If race and ethnicity has no priority for OFSTED, it follows that it is likely to have none for the schools and colleges it inspects or the outside providers that it employs. And your report clearly reveals that this has been the case. Neither the College nor the outside providers have been able to meet the needs of 16 to 19 students in Wolverhampton, hence the crisis.

Yet the solution for at least 15% of students is clear. This is the Asian part of the population totalling 14.3%. It is known that the proportion of students 16-19 exceeds that of the general Asian population, but by how much is known only to the Wolverhampton City Council at the moment. If the Asian population were allowed to provide the education it needs for its citizens, providers would immediately arise and create enthusiasm, empowerment, initiative and enjoyment of education, a much undervalued feature. At present ethnic minorities feel that in all walks of life their future is still being decided by a colonial power and to turn Asian education over to Asians would empower them to be equal. Of course, no one knows what the results would be, but they could not be worse than the present ones, and indications of the greater levels of educational achievement by all Asian minorities (not dealt with in the Ofsted report) suggest that the ultimate benefit to the UK economy would be immense.

Such empowerment might also encourage African-Caribbean people to reach their full capacity as envisaged by W.E.B.du Bois who, in his remarkable book The Souls of Black Folk, declared the colour question the most important issue of the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first century. Or allow the superiority of black folk in sport to be harnessed to the solution of the problem where black boys begin their education at parity with others, but then fall back until at age 16 their GCSE results are below other groups and fewer remain in education or go into training.
Improvement of white boys' results will also occur if the LSC continues to allow not only the methods pioneered at Bilston Community College to be used, but also use of the staff who first made them.

This action of Ofsted as a centre of support for Blairite institutional racism extends to satellite organisations, which although in theory are independent, have the same basic philosophy and serve not the public but new masters in the form of New Labour. These include the Learning and Skills Council, and the Adult Learning Inspectorate. The worst proof of this collaboration is the absolute necessity of maintaining the falsehood that Bilston and Wulfrun College were 'merged' whereas the plain truth is that the smaller Wulfrun College took over Bilston Community College lock, stock and barrel.
To admit the plain truth is to admit that the takeover was institutionally racist, and this institutional racists will resist to the last.

In concluding this report claiming that institutions set up to develop a multicultural society in Britain have been subverted to supporting the aims of the institutionally racist state of Blair's Britain I wish to add some personal comments.

All my political life from 1934 has been devoted to opposition to racism and imperialism, both British and foreign. Its roots lay in the fact that my father died in 1922 of influenza as a result of being gassed in World War 1. My brother and I were brought up by a single parent (my mother) in what was a 'respectable' working class home. When I was demobilised from war service in 1946 including four years in India and Burma an almost bankrupt British Labour government could afford to allow me a three year modest grant allowing me the privilege of being educated at the University of my choice, the London School of Economics. The only reward I sought for this education was to be better able to fight for socialism and the cause of the working class. The same motivation prompted me in the 1960s to take three years away from teaching and paid employment to study for higher degrees and at the same time produce theses on the working class movement in Wolverhampton and the Black Country to demonstrate to working class students that if I could do it, so could they. This, incidentally, left me at one time with three degrees and no employment from heads and principals who preferred the non-hassle of not employing a Communist.

Since those days I have followed the same path and hope I have joined the select circle of those of whom it is possible to say, 'all his life and all his strength was devoted to the cause of the working people..' Now my life is certainly coming to an end and what remains must be put to the best possible use. I cannot any longer pursue in detail campaigns such as this present one against the Chief Inspector of Schools. Such campaigns, if they are to be pursued at all will have to be done by others. My more limited role will be to post new campaigns on either one of two websites: pages. unisonfree.net/friendsofbilstoncollege or the website of George Barnsby Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop which is likely to be www.gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk and leave it to others to develop campaigns, or not.

The other proposal is to publish a series of documents entitled RECENT WRITINGS BY GEORGE BARNSBY OPPOSING THE WAR IN IRAQ AND PROMOTING GOOD RACE RELATIONS IN WOLVERHAMPTON and seek funding for these radical proposals.

Such proposals will allow me leisure to enjoy what is left of my old age. Although it will also allow me to pursue other neglected projects such as the archaeology and early history of Wolverhampton. As with Racism in Wolverhampton, but probably for different reasons, there has been a studied refusal to embody my Origins of Wolverhampton to 1085 into the canon of Wolverhampton history because it debunks the myth of Wulfruna as a saintly benefactor of Wolverhampton and shows her as the Mrs. Thatcher of her age accepting a gift she was not entitled to receive i.e. virtually the whole of Wolverhampton, from people not entitled to give it, and positing a class struggle in Wolverhampton in Saxon times. This I am interested in pursuing in regard to developing world history of the present time.

In conclusion I would state that I may have only a few months, or perhaps on the other hand, even a decade or more to serve the interests of working people. Which ever it is, I am prepared for it.

Dr.G.Barnsby