Except suddenly there was to be. The ELSFA decided well into the academic year some preliminary work was required of providers. In any other situation he would have been concerned. However, he was already so punch-drunk by everything else thrown at him that he simply absorbed it like the rest. In one sense it was easier than the rest, part of his regular work and therefore free of corporate or charity Board member interference.
First, providers were told to carry out some research into the likely implications of the planned changes. For the centre, there was only one question of relevance. As adult learning was no longer to be free to everyone, would those asked to pay actually enrol?
The research was something the ex-bookkeeper would have enjoyed doing and done well, not him. He received no complaint from the adult learning service at what he presented, though he was embarrassed by it and couldn’t imagine it being of any value to the ELSFA or anyone else.
After the research something seriously worrying. Even though the charity’s contract with, ultimately, the ELSFA still had two full years to run, there was to be a competition between local providers running similar adult learning courses.
It was completely new and confusing, contrary to all previous ELSFA practice. Two adult learning providers weren’t affected at all as they ran specialist courses. Among the five that were, three focused on mainstream provision, the other two, including the centre, students unlikely to enrol at a mainstream provider, or certainly not first time around. The two “locals” were intentionally well apart.
These two were specialists in their own right and encouraged their graduates to progress to the mainstream providers once they’d gained the confidence to do so if they wished to progress. Here at this centre, students also had immediate access to its two employability support services. Years of successful straightforward working together, now sudden competitors for no apparent reason.
At the same time, he was drafting a job description for an adult learning quality assurance position to start in the autumn, the post long promised to the adult learning service yet never delivered for lack of funding. The Head of Adult Learning was advising him and would be a member of the interview panel.
The competition was to be in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, complex as referred to at a special training event. Though however complex it might be, it was trivial in comparison with the main ELSFA application that had six sections and always took him several days.
Corporate Interference Yet Again
Now back to his struggle with his supervision overdose. Due to it, he’d mentioned the competition to his line-manager who offered to help. He’d said “no thank you” for five reasons, straightforward as far as he was concerned though apparently not to the corporate as later on.
To accept his line-manager’s offer would mean having to provide a full briefing on the centre’s entire adult learning programme. His line-manager had already missed the special spreadsheet training event. The only time he had for such detailed work was at the weekend when the centre was less demanding, while he was supposed to be working only 28 days a week. Even more critical to him, he would have to explain me, what it meant to have a hemi and how he had to work around me, worked very much slower than his line-manager. He feared misunderstanding or worse. Also, soon after he started at the centre, he’d accepted some assistance from the corporate and ended up having to start again once the assistance had left.
In addition and much the most important, he already had help from someone who knew the centre’s adult learning programme as well as he did and had also attended the spreadsheet training. It came from the centre’s adult learning administrator responsible for course returns, with the centre for more than four years, partner of one of the tutors. And something happened when they completed the spreadsheet that surprised and reassured him. For some reason that happened elsewhere, the administrator was short in confidence. So, when he asked the administrator’s thoughts on the application, the answer wasn’t the cautious response he’d expected, rather a highly enthusiastic one - partners together, no longer employer and employee.
Email Hemi Extension Trap
It was the complete opposite when he’d asked the adult learning administrator to take over from the ex-bookkeeper by receiving copies of his non-private emails. The answer was an embarrassed “no”. He considered asking the new centre administrator, yet there was still a confidence gap needing to be filled. As a result, he didn’t notice the email extension that arrived with the spreadsheet.
It was crazy he hadn’t triple checked every email extension, especially after his previous experience even if by then eight years ago. Utterly irresponsible at any time, now this……The only excuse, not that there could be one, was the stress and exhaustion he’d been under for so long.
As he’d assumed there would be some form of backup, he provided his own. It was five or six pages against the adult learning service’s one when he finally found it. It included all the information the adult learn service had known for years and the help the Head of Adult Learning was providing with the job description for the new adult learning post added. A single back up page against the ELSFA’s six sections of its contract application form.
Then he remembered what had happened with the most recent mainstream nationwide adult learning contract application. The old and the new Heads of Adult Learning had called him in as they thought he’d made a mistake with one of the sections. In fact, it wasn’t the case. However, the point here was the precedent. The Head who’d just spent so much time working with him had a precedent for intervening if something seemed odd once again. He received no call.
The adult learning service, like his corporate line-managers, was aware of me, that he was disabled. Though as always, he never appeared or behaved as if he was.
Fate Yet Again
He hadn’t completely forgotten the story in the autumn that local politicians of the party in power were planning to use the fraud as an excuse to get the centre closed. Having worked out then that, should anything ever happen, it wouldn’t till now, he wasn’t surprised to find himself at a meeting with the local authority’s lead officer responsible for investigating the fraud.
Also present a bit surprisingly were the Head of Adult Learning and his seventh and final line-manager, along with the Chair of the charity and one other member of the charity’s Board. Yes, he understood the reason for the Head’s presence given the importance of the charity’s contract with the adult learning service. No, he didn’t understand his line-manager’s presence as the corporate had nothing to do with either the charity or the charity’s adult learning contract.
He can’t remember much of what the lead officer said. How seriously the local authority considered the fraud. There would be no recommendation in the lead officer’s report, the decision entirely political.
No one present asked why had it taken the lead officer so long to arrange a meeting on a matter, in the view of the local authority, was so important. By now, the fraud had been known for a year. Equally or even more to the point, the local authority hadn’t lost anything itself.
After the officers left, those remaining thought the meeting had gone reasonably well. He was beyond considering it, just holding on for whatever came next.
Local Politics Out in the Open
Shortly after, another meeting that was late. It was open to everyone, the Chair of the charity reporting on the fraud and what had been happening since. The Chair was good at such meetings, though as to be expected made no reference to the TUPE Queen of London and the performance of the corporate.
Everything was going well. The ex-Treasurer attended, its loan already re-paid, and the Chair answered the ex-Treasurer’s questions quietly and in full, with none of the game playing he’d feared.
A local politician of the party in power to ask the final question. The Chair’s approach immediately changed. No detailed answer, instead telling the local politician where to find the answer for themself.
After the meeting the Chair refused to acknowledge what had happened. So, he told the local politician he would send on the information requested, though he knew that hadn’t been the point. Not that he was as disturbed as he might have been. Once again, just one more of everything else and already waiting for the next.
Check-Fate
A couple of days later Bergman finished the film, the Chair of the charity playing Death as the fuse finally blew.
It was a Thursday afternoon in early July, a year after he’d discovered the fraud, three and a half years since it had been agreed that his position was impossible. The Chair had just come from a meeting with the same Director of the corporate who’d dismissed TUPE and reneged on the agreement, till recently the two in opposite sides with him holding everything together.
The Chair informed him his adult learning application had failed, and failed to such an extent the adult learning contract had already been terminated with no suggestion of any form of appeal. The Chair referred to some figures, perhaps three out of 80. Presumably not precise, yet certainly something immense. And somehow his own support paper with the spreadsheet and the correct paper had been different. Yet they’d both said the same year after year - not that it meant anything now.
It was completely over. He’d failed everyone, tutors, staff, users, everyone utterly. No thought at all about his years of living the impossible with the corporate. It was him alone and his failure. Years and years at it. Now this in an instant. It was time to go. The Chair agreed. He’d no right to remain.
It was one of those moments when two minds struggled with each other. Blankness, shame, dismay. Yet at the same time there was something not right, didn’t make sense – submitting an adult learning application to the Head of Adult Learning as always, the result being delivered to the Chair (of the charity) in conjunction with the same Director of the corporate. Again, not that it meant anything.
His head was on his desk. As soon as the Chair left, he got up. Melodrama. He’d never behaved that way before. He got going again as if nothing had happened.
That night he had his best sleep for goodness knows how long. The burden of his impossible position year after year was over and he hadn’t had time yet to wheel in the replacement. He turned up early next morning as usual, had a successful meeting, then headed to HR.
HR gave him two options to consider over the weekend – be gagged from saying anything critical of the corporate for £4,000 and a reference, or the sack. He was given half an hour at the centre to collect his belongings, his line-manager would then come to escort him away.
Destructively Absurd
He was surprised he’d been allowed back unsupervised. Imagine what he might have stolen or even caused a commotion? Though hardly likely after his performance at his disciplinary.
His line-manager was punctual as to be expected playing the role of illegal immigrant removal officer, except it was broad daylight instead of clandestinely early in the morning. Fortunately, it seemed no one noticed his leaving. Unsurprisingly, he remembered the Matrix Standard award of a year ago that confirmed everyone at the centre had felt safe - except for him.
Now the final reminder of the ridiculousness of it all, or perhaps there would be two more at the very end. As soon as he parted company with his line-manager, he returned to the centre to write a debriefing report for the Chair of the charity. Habit again, including habit on the part of the Chair to expect it of him.
He went back to the centre over the weekend. Yet more habit. He took away papers to support a major complaint that in the end he never sent. He left his set of keys in the post box – when the corporate opened the centre, it got the address wrong and took months to put it right. A kind of omen for the future as well as the past [image 17].
