Well that’ll be a first! we all cry at Leaky Towers.
And what you might ask has inspired this latest portentous statement by the Birkenhead MP with a particular flair for melodrama?
Well, this is an interesting little story that just might become a very big story indeed. The quote above comes from an excellent piece in Schools Week titled DfE policy adviser leaves trust amid finance investigation. We admit it is not one of our regular reads but our readers are an educated bunch and one of them tipped us the wink about this particular story which concerns :
A chief executive and operations manager at an academy trust have left their posts amid an internal investigation over a budget black hole supposedly totalling several hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Tom Quinn, chief executive at Holy Family Catholic Multi-Academy Trust, left his post last week, alongside operations director Sally Mitchell.
Quinn is a member of the secondary headteacher reference group, a select group of “leading headteachers” that advise and influence the Department for Education’s policy development.
A statement from the Diocese of Shrewsbury, which founded the Wirral-based trust, said Quinn and Mitchell left “with the mutual consent of the trustee directors” on Thursday. Quinn also served as executive headteacher at the Holy Family’s St John Plessington Catholic College. The school’s chair of governors, John Williams, has also resigned.
Schools Week understands that an internal financial investigation is ongoing surrounding potentially several hundreds of thousands of pounds of cash missing from the trust’s budget. The trust would not comment on this allegation.
Quinn and Mitchell are also respectively interim chief executive and interim chief finance officer at Frank Field Education Trust.
Needless to say Wirral Leaks has already run several stories on the Frank Field Education Trust and the questionable connections that Frankenfield has made in the set up of this almighty (no pun intended) and monumental vanity project. Liverpool Echo have belatedly caught up with their Super head who left role a week ago amid investigation has ALREADY got a new top job story where Field comments : “On behalf of the Board, we are looking forward tremendously to working with Tom in boosting the life chances of children who, without his ability, would have opportunities denied to them.” The Frank Field Education Trust itself did not comment on the little local difficulty involving Tom Quinn and his sudden departure from the Holy Family Catholic Multi-Academy Trust and St John Plessington Catholic College.
However Field is a lot more forthcoming in Schools Week. After the Frank Field Education Trust refused to comment on the grounds that there was an ongoing investigation the man himself was up to his usual tricks and when questioned about the Holy Family’s ongoing investigation, Field added:
As things unfold, we must try and understand why people have tried to bring down one of our great headmasters. The most important thing for me is to bind myself with Tom. I have never ever doubted his qualities, his brilliance in teaching, his honesty.
At stages in the future, people will have to account for their actions. I’m willing to answer for mine.
Oh, if only that were the case! We can only hope and pray that one day those final words will come back and bite Field hard and where it hurts most – his ego. All we do know that whilst at this stage we can’t comment on Mr Quinn’s qualities – good or bad – we do know that based on the dodgy acolytes and dubious chancers that Field has surrounded himself with over the years that he has consistently proved to be an appalling judgment of character…
Wirralleaks 
My Lord, I am not convinced that your picture editor is up to the job. Surely all written editorial concerning Frank F. should be illustrated with the excellent photograph of Frank at the Feeding Birkenhead event? You know the one.. the one I consider to be great art, equal to the Last Supper. Only the best for Frankie lad…
We’re saving that for a story about one of the table attendees at the ‘Last Supper at the Lauries’…
Oh the web of deceit, it’s entwined and depressing, you have to doubt everybody. Thankyou wirralleaks keep their feet to the fire!
I do not recall this particular photoshoot with Frankenfield but I would have whispered in his ear: “Frank, this is your social conscience calling. You need to confess all and explain why you have ensured Birkenhead has become the most deprived area in the UK so you can have a career as the Poverty Czar for the Government. Fess up Frank about the serious damage you have done to an entire economy and generations of people you knowingly condemned to shocking levels of deprivavation. ”
But of course past experience of whispering in Frankenfields ear has taught me he suffers from selective deafness and even more selective self promotion.
Frank Field.
As holy as a battered, rusted colander.
I think you’d find plenty of school staff across the peninsula happy to speak off the record about Quinn’s qualities, and “good” probably wouldn’t be the word of choice.
Being bigged up by Frank as the future of education in our fair town is a bit of a poisoned chalice if the fate of David Hughes and then UCAT is any guide.
It would not be surprising if Mr Quinn comes out well.
His children went to same primary school as mine and he and his wife seemed good eggs.
But again
There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face
Let’s wait and see…
1. Is Tom Catholic?
2. Has Tom been to Confession?
3. When is Tom due to emerge?
Tom Quinn is a bully. He has driven many fantastic, hardworking and dedicated teachers from the profession through his regime. If your face fits with the Plessington Posse then you’ll be just fine. If you are an ex Plessington student then you are looked after and protected. If you come from a school or have trained in a school he doesn’t deem as being on par with Plessington (where there is a huge drug problem amongst the pupils), then you are trodden down until they ask you to leave your position or your mental health is so badly affected that you cannot continue. I have worked with many teachers who have been targeted by the man and his many minions that he has working behind the scenes. St Mary’s has been infiltrated (arguably, something had to change as Tony Boyle is completely hopeless!) by Plessington staff, shoe-horning fantastic, passionate teachers from their positions to make way for these new robotic members of his gang. They are liars, spies and only want to submerge themselves even further up his back side. I am absolutely thrilled to see karma being served to this man and the shame that must be felt by his followers.
As for Frank Field, what an absolute loser. For someone who has proclaimed to be an advocate for mental health, he has teamed up with someone causing some of the issues in the first place. I hope he finds Tom’s back passage as comfortable as the crippling student loan debt suffered by teachers who had hoped to forge a career and change the face of education and prospects for our young adults on the Wirral who are now seeking employment outside of the sector.
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