carte blanche

In response to an online article written by my previous head about women in leadership (which for obvious reasons I cannot include), a person -who is very close to me- wrote this comment:

A bland piece which in no way reflects the typical working style of the author, who since the start of her headship has been responsible for a huge churn of staff and concerns over her approach from colleagues, parents and the wider school community. There are multiple allegations of the head bullying and victimising staff, yet here she writes about nurture and building aspiration through ‘living your values’ and ‘having a strong sense of moral purpose’. It’s hard to see how this is real when she has created a culture where staff and children have been made really quite miserable. It would be wonderful if you could say the head was enthused by leading and developing her team rather than spitefully victimising so many of them, or that the children feel supported and encouraged when she has never shown interest in any of the children as individuals. You have to wonder, really, why a person works in education if that very basic focus – wanting each and every child to thrive – is missing. It's infuriating as well as wholly misleading – as the author well knows – to interpret the numerous concerns raised about her behaviour at [the school] as the result of narrowly focused and gender stereotyped ideas of what heads ‘should’ look like. The many concerns are about what she has done and what she has said. To characterise this as some kind of sexism is absurd as well as insulting. Is it really believable that this head has had to further, entirely by herself, the progressive cause against an entrenched culture of misogyny at [the] School?

It was not published. The journal advised them that they could not put it up:

Dear [X],

I trust this finds you well. My apologies for not being able to approve your comment. The sole reason is that your common (sic) is in legal terms libellous and I as editor of the magazine would be responsible for publishing it. As such, in order to publish it, I would need to hold evidence that would enable me to defend publication in court should the magazine been sued after publication.

I don't for one second doubt the veracity of what you say, but the fact remains that I would not be able to defend my publication of your comment and so cannot put the magazine in that position.

To publish something like this we'd need to run our own investigation and collate our own evidence and testimony – which is something this magazine is not really set up for, being a best practice, pedagogically-driven publication.

I do hope you understand my position.

All my best

(…)

Editor

Yet again, that good old lack of accountability rears its ugly head. Carte blanche for her to be able to share spurious claims and platitudes to her heart's content. Without any checks or balances.