Diocesan Academy Papers Hidden at Mar-a-Lago

Conspiracy theorists claim D. Trump hid key papers to do with the academisation of Birmingham archdiocese schools UK at his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.

The diocesan spokesperson, following customary practice, made no comment, offered no explanation and did not respond to requests.

The surviving, available key documents to do with the transformation of Birmingham diocesan schools into academies are the Vision for Education and Multi Academy Strategy official statement, a backing statement from the archbishop and a pile of papers dealing with the legal aspects of setting up or joining a Multi Academy Company. All the papers are from diocesan officials and full of aims and intentions as you would expect, so they must be accurate.

In May 2018 Canon Veasey wrote that he hoped “to harness the significant experience, expertise, and innovative ideas by our leaders across the Diocese”.

Great idea. Scope for everyone to join in and have their say, as you would expect.

What resulted from harnessing of all that expertise and experience is not too clear.

Still, all legal aspects of becoming a member of a MAC and identifying who could be in charge or be responsible were laid out in tiresome but necessary legal detail. Role descriptions and responsibilities were articulated along with accountability channels, application forms were specified, as well as person specs for a variety of roles.

Nobody was left in any doubt about who was leading this transformation and where it was to end.

All angles covered.

Job done.

That legal paperwork was not spirited away to be hidden in D. Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.

However, the vast amount of recorded material harnessing significant expertise and experience from leaders across the Diocese disappeared.

By March 2022 a list of MACs was published. Also, an inspirational statement of Vision for Education and Multi Academy Strategy was put out that gives a rich account of the diocese’s  new style of Catholic schooling.

What more could you want?

It might have helped had someone said how to put the vision into practice, unless you were dealing with practising Catholic headteachers and governors with degrees in theology and scripture who could figure that for themselves.

Or the schools and their website writers could await the same tsunami of paperwork about to appear outlining all these key considerations similar to the amount of paper that supported the legal aspects of the process.

Or perhaps there were clues and examples of best practice in the harnessed information gathered from leaders across the diocese.

Yet still some lost souls wandered highways and rural byways, outside the sheepfold of an Academy, in need to searchers to find them and bring them home.

At one point, waverers were invited to look at the objective, measured, honest testimonies from those who had already become academies who had no vested interest whatsoever in anyone joining them as proof they had made the right decision.

Faced with the overwhelming force of a self-interested group of schools justifying their decisions and covering up what some saw as a craven retreat from their principles, many heads and chairs of governors remained unconvinced.

Pressure discretely applied in line with gospel values led them to the irrefutable conclusion that they should join.

Having been enticed to become academies, those who had taken the plunge, without the well-argued papers that showed how to act when they allegedly reneged on their independent position, were left high and dry when it came to explain what it meant to be a Catholic Academy school or a member of a Catholic Multi Academy Company (CMAC, or MAC for short).

In the absence of any guidance or position papers and lacking comprehensive and detailed direction meticulously recorded in minuted meetings between the diocese and the schools as to what it means to be a Catholic Academy in Birmingham diocese, Catholic school websites resorted to using pre-Academy accounts of being Catholic school.

Most made no reference to belonging to a MAC.

They overcame the difficulty of describing how a Catholic school is part of the diocesan mission to spread the gospel message.

They omitted any mention of the diocese.

Instead, they wrote about saying lots of prayers at the drop of a hat and noted a weekly celebration of Mass in the local parish, if the church was conveniently built behind the school. 

Should the parish church be further than two streets away they described walking there as part of their PE exercise for the week and as an act of community outreach, but added that H&S requirements were duly observed.

Pupils were accompanied by outriders protecting against intrusions by parents with court orders to stay away from their children, fizzy drinks sellers, paedophiles, drug dealers and former pupils recruiting county line gang members.

The reality of some schools who had no contact with their local parish other than the obligatory celebration of Mass in the school on feast days, left them as prepared for writing their websites as a one-legged sailor who had lost his prosthetic leg facing a storm about to swamp his boat.

The websites of the MACs themselves in some cases are best described as beggaring imagination.

Others were written by authors who know what Catholic schools are like, how they operate and clearly drew on their own vast experience of schools and Catholic education over many years. Their writing is striking.

Those MACs led by leaders with little or no experience of leading schools were rescued by the sterling work of their deputies hired at great expense to fill that gap in their leaders’ experience.

This solution of appointing no-experience-of-the-business specialists was first adopted by the NHS some years ago. Its effectiveness as a business model is witnessed to by the amazing success of the NHS under their leadership. Lowering targets so that they will be hit by ever decreasing performance measures is a sure way they demonstrate success. It is only surpassed as a ready explanation for dire statistics by blaming so many people for being ill. If it wasn’t for the increase in numbers of seriously ill patients asking for help the NHS would be a mile ahead of the game under their non-experience.

The insights of all the experts, the harnessing of significant experience, expertise, and innovative ideas from leaders so carefully gleaned over many meetings and consultations by the diocese, are among the records lost to Mar-a-Lago, according to the conspiracy theorists.

In the same boxes hidden in Mar-a-Lago are the records of public and private meetings and discussions, along with reports presented by education experts, theologians and scripture commentators of the highest renown.

This absence of the research papers, the position papers, the detailed minutes of meetings, along with explanations and inadvertently erased WhatsApp messages, means that few are certain what a Catholic Multi Academy school should look like, how it should perform and what is the best way it describes itself to be Catholic in its writing as well as in its actions.

The new inspection process does little to add to clarity. Reports provide little opportunity for schools to reflect on and refine their understanding of what it is to be a Catholic Academy school.

Those in the research community tasked with conducting case studies of Catholic school websites, find it professionally repugnant to criticise schools for not doing what they were not told they ought to be doing when they were left to their own devices.

In place of the missing guidance papers, school website writers were left to grasp at scriptural phrases, use quotations out of context and hide behind narrow interpretations of gospel passages to justify what they wrote. They spouted shibboleths that trip off the tongue without any contact with reality.

Many fall back on describing themselves as prayer communities with lots of Catholic and religious stuff going on but not to the extent that such activities get in the way of being super-successful schools, just like the LA school down the road, only with better stats.

There is one Catholic MAC where the CSEL, or CEO as he is called, says his aim is to be the best Catholic MAC in the country. Is he serious?

Being the best at anything in the country is no guarantee of true success. Eton and Winchester schools are touted as top schools until you list their alumni and their achievements.

Surely his aim should be to do the best for each of his students and to aim to be the best he can be in bringing the schools in his care to supporting the diocesan mission. He has a long way to go with that.

A second conspiracy theory claims there were no such guidance documents to begin with; there was no harnessing of significant experience, expertise, and innovative ideas.

This is so outrageous a suggestion that not even the wildest imagination could give it credence.

No organisation would ever embark on such a wholesale, deep rooted, tectonic shift in its nature, behaviours and alteration of course without carefully documenting every twist and turn, recording every proposal and alterative considered and accounting for the expert contributions of professionals and those engaged in the field.

The reader can sometimes surmise the basis for some changes without the accompanying documentation. For instance, the amateur gathering of schools into Academy families was based on the AA Route Planner and geographical grouping considerations. Any surmises beyond that are in the realm of speculation and not worthy of the time required to refute them.

There is only one answer to the lack of pertinent documents in the diocese according to the conspiracy theorists. They lie in the vaults of an estate in Florida.

A plea to D. Trump: Give us back our documents so we can engage in being the best we can be as we follow the detailed and comprehensive guidance carefully displayed there, or tell us where you have laid them so that we can find them and bring them back to life.

14.02.2024

(c) Ted Dunphy