...or lack thereof

Last week, I wrote a piece entitled ‘Duty of care’ putting the onus on the Chair of Governors (CoG). Here is a companion piece.

As I have mentioned in the past, I put in a number of subject access requests (SARs) to the school. Amongst the myriad irrelevant documents sent my way, and despite the huge number of documents that were not sent, some extremely revealing emails were included.

Some of these were emails between governors, and between the CoG and the head. It is clear in all this correspondence that the governors unconditionally stood by the head in late 2019 - despite my nervous breakdown and staff concern. 

It would appear that impartiality and duty of care were never even considered.

As I mentioned in the previous post, shortly after my breakdown, a letter was sent to the CoG by a member of staff, on behalf of other union member staff who wished to remain anonymous. It raised concerns about the Head's management of me and about her responses to concerns around workload.

In one email, the CoG contacted certain governors to inform them she had received the letter. She claimed that she wanted to follow procedure carefully but that she thought that there was very little the governors could do about it as she did not consider it to be an official complaint. All highly convenient for both her and the head.

Three days later, an email was sent by the CoG to other governors that she had assured the head of their continuing support and that staff issues were still having an adverse effect on her. The CoG was concerned at how ‘tough’ the situation was for the head and how the governors could offer any external support.

What about us?

In the same mail, she related that the head was carefully documenting as much as possible with regarding me. Apparently, she was considering staff well-being and what might be useful in terms of external assessment regarding workload – nothing came of this. She concluded the email by writing that she would respond carefully to the member of staff who had contacted her: the person -another union rep- was next on the list to be victimised by the head and given a bogus disciplinary…

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Since that fateful winter, nearly three years have passed. There has been significant correspondence between the CoG and me. Not once has she acknowledged that the head has done anything untoward or that the school and board of governors have been remiss regarding duty of care. I wrote official letters (two are included in previous posts - https://alexgwinnett.blogspot.com/2022/04/letter-to-governors-july-2020.html & https://alexgwinnett.blogspot.com/2022/06/second-letter-to-governors-220722.html) – nothing came of them. When I finally blew the whistle officially, she claimed that due to criticism towards the governing body an independent adjudicator would have to be used.

Through one of the SARs, I discovered that she had tried to instigate GDPR procedures when I sent correspondence to her and other governors. She believed I had wrongfully got hold of their email addresses, forgetting that I had been in touch with all of them whilst still working at the school and since. Quite the own goal there.

You would think such collusion may raise questions among people with integrity: where are these people?