No really she is unbelievably a governor of an Academy. Not Furness Academy Limited, yet, but she is a governor of West Lakes Academy.
Let's not forget that on her watch the head man Barry Cooper, the best man for the job, was sacked after an investigation into bullying at the West Lakes Academy. Also 'her' school narrowly escaped entering special measures after it's recent Ofsted inspection.
Still here's a bit of history from another of the CN groups titles which shows... well see for yourself what it shows.
Here recorded for posterity is Doug's latest message. October 2009 Half term.
Rather belatedly Stagecoach the towns sole public bus service provider has realised that the Furness Academy school day finishes quite a bit before every other secondary schools school day so it's double deckers can do double duty on school days.
Just a quick question.
On the Evening Mail web site and in their paper publication they actively encourage people to comment on 'selected' stories. They used to allow people to comment on every story but not these days. Must be connected to cost saving somehow or other as everything else they do these days results in a cost saving, as thirty Barrovian ex-employees have found out to their cost.
Anyway...
Incredibly Ed Balls has blown £11,000,000 taxpayer pounds on advertising his parties 'qualification for all' the Diploma. Despite this huge amount of the public's wedge disappearing into advertising agencies wallets the take up of these qualifications is poor.
Ed apologises for getting the Richard Rose fiasco wrong even though its not his fault apparently. Someone please remind me why this country needs people like Ed Balls.
Once again Mike Parr takes Douglas to task. Sadly this is only a short interview and Douglas avoids directly answering any questions. Seems his private talk with John Hutton revolved around 'How to avoid answering a direct question, NuLabour style!'
Just arrived and worthy of a read. It seems that we in Barrow are not alone...
Here we go again back in the Evening Mail's fantasy land of Exclusive Interviews. In case it hadn't noticed, and clearly it hasn't, there are NO OTHER LOCAL PAPERS so every flaming interview it gets is an 'exclusive'.
Suffice to say that the Academy has some problems or issues depending
on your point of view.
From where I am standing, on the outside looking
in as it were, it seems clear to me that these issues/problems stem
from two possible causes.
Well the Evening Mail sent in a key information gatherer to the Furness Academy Company school buildings and she came up with this article. My eldest son has read it through and he said it jars with a lot of the view points of the Year 11's and 10's he has contact with so what do you think?
I've had a weekend of periodically looking into how daft the DCSF really is. Leaving aside for a moment how effective it really is in flushing billions of pounds down the plughole every single year in pursuit of higher and higher artificial grades rather than ensuring that ALL children leave secondary school armed with the basics.
In Scotland at least.
Reading up more on the sheer madness that exists in 21st Century Britain this evening I came across this short piece of total insanity...
Thankfully it's not just me!
Have a read of the following especially the numbers the lady, Danae, quotes towards the end of her post. It's scary to understand that this government wants to lock ALL of our children into their system which fails so badly.
Quite what the National Childrens Bureau has to do with educating children is beyond me. Still they think they are doing a grand job.
Without going into details we have decided as a family to home school our
youngest son. So the current DCSF 'investigation' into the safety of
home schooled children currently underway is of keen interest to me.
I
am aware this has next to nothing to do with the Academy but I am
going to be using this blog to put on the public record the steps we
have taken so far as the powers that be have proved themselves to be as
incompetent as I thought they were, sadly.
Just a short test post to see if everything is working.
For some bizarre reason Google analytics caused errors in a plugin and that kept me and everyone else from logging in!
As the Conservatives are pontificating this week the Labour government is quiet.
The new school is also very quiet with all the chatter about crappy uniform quality and bizarre discipline issues disappearing from peoples minds.
The County Council is trying to modernise itself by sacking a lot of 'paid on performance' people and changing the job title of those who remain. Sounds grand but it's a drop in the ocean.
And so scouring the web for info on the Royal Mail strikes as these have a direct and unwanted impact on my source of income I came across this article.
As scary as things appear to be when hidden from view rarely do they turn out to be as bad as our imagination tells us they'll be. However when it comes to education the imagination seems to be nowhere near as bad as the reality!
This practice is alive and well in 21st Century Britain and Barrow is one of the 'deprived' areas being aided by a structural Academy, an massive increase in vocational qualifications and a corresponding decrease in academic qualifications.
This saddens me because...
Now both Academy site open evenings have been completed it's worth a minute or two to examine how they went.
Updated 5th October 2009