Oaklands to close

Life doesn’t seem to get any easier. After such a hectic time lately, it was another late night yesterday as Southampton City Council met, or at least the cabinet, which is Conservative in make up, to decide the fate of education in the city. During the past weeks I’ve attended so many meetings at the Guildhall and with individual councillors with the express aim of ensuring our favoured bidder was successful.

I know it won’t be of interest to anyone really but the Trust led by the two universities, local businesses, FE colleges etc was far and away the most popular bidder in the process and had the almost universal backing of Governing Bodies and Headteachers across the city and beyond with the advantage of not being an academy with a national rather than local agenda. All evening it appeared the Trust would win but the announcement when it came allowed Oasis Learning to emerge as winners on both sides of the city. Incredibly public opinion counted for nothing as party politics came to the fore.

Having had a drink afterwards and a couple more at home I felt pretty wrecked for school this morning but that was nothing to the tears in the staff room and stunned disbelief which pervaded the school all day.

It seems there is some hope still as the opposition parties outnumber the Tories and if they work together, they can make changes but it is a long shot.

To top it all off, I see we lost at football again although we did score. Anyone want to claim it? The score was 3 – 1 according to the website.

I had the pleasure of going to Poole Hospital this evening for my appointment with the nose specialist but we agreed my nose looked ok and decided to forego having it broken back again. The soft cartilage will take a while to settle and I’m told no football for 3 – 4 weeks which suits me fine the way I’ve been playing lately. Cricket is ok but I guess a ball in the face would not be a good idea. That is always the case though so I might give that a go this weekend as we’re playing the top team and I could give them some balls to whack all over the place before losing my wicket for 0.