Ordinary Gweilo

Sunday’s SCMP had a very muddled piece by Katherine Forestier, their education correspondent, about the problems at Kennedy School (run by the English Schools Foundation) and the demand by the staff that the chairman of the school council should resign. I read the story a few times, and I’m still not sure that I fully understand it. The problem is, I think, is that this is effectively a follow-up to a piece that appeared in the paper a couple of weeks ago. Is it too much to ask that the paper should summarize the story so far, for those of us that don’t remember all the details?

It’s also a bit of a non-story, given that the piece in the SCMP two weeks earlier said the teachers had sent a letter to the council expressing no confidence in it. Now they’re calling for the chairman of the council to resign. Big deal.

The story in Sunday’s paper tells us that teachers are complaining about the way that the school council (and specifically its chairman) handled a meeting with parents about the decision not to renew the principal’s contract. What happened in the meeting and why are they upset? We are not told, though we do get Nury Vittachi’s denial of some of their claims about what happened, so we can deduce some of their complaints from this.

It all becomes a bit clearer if you do re-read the article in the SCMP two weeks ago (now archived here):

An English Schools Foundation principal who was voted out of her job by her school council says she will “go quietly” if she is paid $3.2 million in compensation, a letter to staff has alleged. Vanessa Bingham, principal of Kennedy School, Pokfulam, had been told her services would not be required when her contract ended at the end of August next year.

I think there was a follow-up article in the SCMP about the meeting, giving more details of the teachers complaints (I believe they said that they were not allowed to speak in the meeting), and a comment from the ESF justifying the decision.

As a footnote, this is actually the second day in a row that Nury Vittachi has been quoted by the SCMP in his role as chairman of the school’s PTA. He’s not a famous author anymore, he’s the chairman of Kennedy School PTA!