Bournemouth and Poole deserves a College (that shares its name) with far better management and accountability

(Post made at 1620 UK BST time on 6 Oct 2018 in a personal capacity.  Please see here for important background and disclosure of interests).

This site now has a proper domain: https://improvebpcollege.com.

I’m proud of Bournemouth and have loved living here for just over 20 years now.

It is a matter of great concern and shame (certainly not one of pride) to me that the Bournemouth and Poole College is (in my opinion, based on close experience of it for several years) so badly run.

In my opinion, the way it has behaved in recent years with regard to its management of CWYM (the Centre for Wessex Young Musicians) and the Wessex Youth Orchestra (WYO), and in particular the way it operated its complaints process has been more like what one would expect in a third world country, or a “banana republic”, than in a modern democratic one with respect for the law.

In my view, the Bournemouth and Poole community deserves far better than having a college with its name that displays “third world” levels of standards of accountability.

The Bournemouth and Poole College’s 11,000 students (including some 200 CWYM children [the exact figure is currently unknown, the CWYM website has been saying for years wording similar to “200 and growing”), its staff and the local community deserve far better management.  This is a charity (“The College is an exempt charity for the purposes of Part 3 of the Charities Act 2001”, from page 3 of its latest (2017) annual report) that I believe has acted appallingly.

So I’m asking for things to improve. Quickly. I want Bournemouth and Poole College to be far better managed, with proper accountability.  To become something that I, and others in the Bournemouth and Poole area, can be rightly proud of.