Since June 2011 I have been saying that because of the uncomfortably undue haste with which the previous headmaster at St Bede’s College in Manchester was relieved of his responsibilities at the school and with the arrival of the inadequate Mr Daniel Kearney, appearing over the hill like the US cavalry with all guns blazing and bugles blowing, beating out the rhythm of old time discipline for all and it being the only answer to 21st century liberation in education, I have realised that there is something drastically wrong with the foundation of the school and the retrogressive moves with regard to its management. There is also something seriously wrong with my opening 102 word sentence but I had no way of shortening it.
Under Byrne, with his hard work but jaundiced eye, the school had built itself up into an establishment of prominence. A place where, although abuse occurred, a tight lid was kept on it and where eventually nearly all clerics were weeded out and where the lay staff enjoyed year after year of increasingly better results.
For most staff it was undoubtedly a place to work and enjoy working. This ethos continued under Michael Barber, with a slight blip in 2010 which was soon corrected in 2011 but unfortunately he had been shown the door during the exams. The staff however still retained that belief in themselves and their abilities to march on improving or at least stay on par with the previous year.
So then came Kearney with his Opus Dei righteousness suggesting a form of religion and discipline that was 100 years out of date. He was ably backed by the nodders who make up the Board of Governors and the scheming chairman, Monsignor Michael Quinlan, who with nothing to do in his front row parish of St Winifred’s in Heaton Mersey decided to interfere at Bede’s, backed up by his acolyte, the now defunct Fr Timothy Hopkins. In a play that I have just written about St Bede’s in the 1950s and 60s, I say that when you bring up discipline into a first line form of control, you diminish authority. But there was Kearney spouting it in the first few sentences in his address to parents from the new head. He had lost the plot in the first few weeks.
The Quinlan, Kearney, Hopkins triumvirate were like a team of saboteurs that had been wired up wrong. Whatever did not need fixing, they fixed. The staff management system that had worked perfectly well for years was now discarded, now young inexperienced teachers, with a penchant for applauding Kearney every time he farted, were promoted and the tried and tested heads of department, were quickly winnowed out.
You could see how quickly Mr Kearney soon lost touch with the dressing room, to use a footballing parlance and you could soon see what all this managerial manoeuvring was all about. A cost saving that was purely about cost cutting and no heed at all in what it would do to the quality of the product. If these three had been in commercial management, they would have been removed quickly. One thing you must not do if you intend to remain in a niche position in the market of education is to regress on quality, cut cost by all means but find other ways than dumbing down the end product.
It became obvious immediately, when Quinlan and Kearney invited Mancini’s young Light Blues into the College and allowed the school to become a finishing establishment for young footballers, a craft well known for its lack of academic vigour. It was all about money and nothing else mattered but they still gathered in the hard earned bucks of captive parents who had no choice but to keep paying for this diluted quality that they had not signed up to.
Mr Kearney , in a year, with his grossness of management had knocked the school back 30 years in academic achievement. The staff, once excellent, had lost their appetite of going that extra mile for pupils to stretch themselves and at this level pupils need stretching. They just sat the year out, mumbled and moaned and did nothing, because basically they are not that type of person. When it comes to rocking the boat, teachers as a breed, might as well stay on dry land. They do not know how, they have not got it in them to say “Fuck off” when imbecility happens above them. Look at Duggan’s antics in the 1950s and 60s, he was allowed to do as he pleased, the staff just watched, perhaps in amazement, but just watched. There was only one or two men in my 60 year experience of the school who had the nerve to say that, they were not backed up by others and were quickly removed.
To show how badly the school has performed under Kearney et al, this week Performance Tables issued by the Department of Education were issued for last summers public examinations. These tables were sent to me by a disgruntled teacher who can see that St Bede’s College is on the road to perdition, unless something extraordinary is not done. Sacking Daniel Kearney and that shrew of an assistant, Sandra Pyke, might be a start but that will not happen under this Catholic fundamentalism that has raised its head.
Go here http://www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=105594 to look at St Bede’s performance.
The important line is the results for A*- C grades this year under “Year on year comparisons” and you will notice a 12% drop in performance. This drop from 91% to 79% brings it into line with good non fee paying local authority schools and not at all in line with the top knotch independent schools where it had been. Parents might now be asking why fork out the spondulicks when the quality ain’t there. Definitely St Bede’s has been dumbed down to save cost and to allow in Mancini’s unfortunates. To keep to footballing parlance, its like a Premier League side after being relegated into the First Division, parting with their best players and cutting wages. It is easier to live in the First or even Second division, the club will get by and it is not that hard work is needed. Why stretch yourself, why go that extra mile, fuck the parents and the pupils for that matter.