As soon as an organisation is reluctant to investigate something my immediate thought is that they’re covering something up. That’s not to say that they are. . . but having run a business I understand that reputation is everything. Therefore if something was ever raised as a concern, from staff or students, I would not hesitate to investigate the matter. If the matter involved me (and it sometimes did) I was even more adamant that it should be investigated properly as I wanted to clear my name as quickly as possible.
This year I’ve written quite a bit about how poorly Birds handled the criticisms publicly stated around bullying and favouritism. They let the “story” run its course and then announced that the people directly involved in the allegations would be retiring at the end of the year. There were to be no investigations. The welfare of students and staff were sold out in a bid to “protect the brand”
Arts Ed similarly tried to weather the storm but several Deadline articles later, a petition from parents and evidence presented online eventually persuaded them to open their 2nd independent investigation of the last few years. Their first one was damning so it’ll be interesting to eventually read what this KC discovers (if anything)
Today Private Eye has published an article revealing that Trinity College London has been reported to OfQual and the Charity Commission several times over recent years, but on each occasion, they have dodged a formal investigation. Now obviously I have a real interest in this, as I too reported them several times to both organisations and each time was presented with reasons as to why it was none of their business.
When The Stage covered The MTA’s closing, Trinity issued several rebuttals to our claims, each one full of inaccuracies, and each one coming with a side order of a threat to sue if we pursued in our aim to hold them accountable for their actions. I personally wrote to their Chairman, to implore him to open an investigation to find out once and for all if Trinity had acted within their own policies at all times. He categorically refused.
The article in Private Eye demonstrates quite clearly that Trinity isn’t the bastion of excellence that it claims to be. In fact the article supports some of the stuff that our whistleblowers were telling us, about how standards were left to slide as they attempted to crack the lucrative overseas market. There can be no reason to examine a 2-year-old other than to collect their money at the end of it. Has Trinity been exposed by the allegation that they were putting profit before their self-lauded standards?
All Trinity ever had to do to close down our narrative around our validation process was to bring in an independent investigator, somebody who had the opportunity to interview myself, my staff and indeed Trinity’s staff, including the two assessors. Within a few months, we would have all discovered the definitive truth – and all could walk away with reputations intact (or tatters)
Now journalists are looking at them and I fear that the revelations could be a lot more damaging for all. . . but simply because they failed to investigate right at the beginning. Which of course is where I started this blog. . .
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