OxBowBusiness

Interesting parallel

Interesting parallels.

I see that the News of the World claim that Sven claims that football is riddled with corruption.
“And he and his agent Athole Still named THREE teams they suspect of links to the bungs scandal now rocking the Football Association. CLUB ONE is a struggling Premiership outfit whose manager Eriksson labelled "the worst" at taking backhanders. CLUB TWO is one of the country's most famous names whose boss Still accused of being involved in a big transfer "scam" . CLUB THREE is another leading side which allegedly paid over the odds for players in "illegal deals". “
Source: http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/
Interesting that the FA has finally started interviewing people such as Mike Newell when he too went public. But will they interview Sven? He has actually named the clubs – though the newspaper hasn’t. Will they make their full tape available to the FA.?
Or is it too important, in World Cup year to fudge it all and hope the official complainants (Newell, Holloway etc) rather than the unofficial ones (Sven) go away?
In the 1990s the education world was rife with rumours that Education was corrupt. Newspapers and the TV ran stories about Maths papers being sold on the streets. It was a standing joke among Economics teachers that ‘if you want to know what’s in the Economics paper then just go and look at School X’s mocks at Easter.’ I know of a school that always hires a particular Examiner to run their Easter Course. ‘Why him?’ I asked the Head of Business Studies. ‘Because he teaches what is in the exam in the summer’ was the reply. I remember a conference I ran at a school where, when I started talking about Europe a pupil said, “No need to do that. The Chief Examiner came a few weeks ago and he said not to bother, it was not in the exam”. The Head of Business confirmed this orally – but wouldn’t do so in writing. One year, I produced a revision booklet in which I dealt with telemarketing. A telephone call came from a teacher. “Why did you include this chapter? How did you know it is in the exam?” I replied that I didn’t know it was in the exam. “Well, anyway, it is’ he said. Other instances such as an Exam Board sending the exam paper out the day before the exam to various Examiners ‘for you to read through’ plus the oft repeated claim that ‘standards haven’t fallen’ and ‘standards are the same across the boards’ continued.
Was anyone ever interviewed? Despite all the private and public utterances made by me and others were any of us ever asked to explain or even ‘put up or shut up’?
No.
Hopefully the FA won’t make the same mistake.

Chris Sivewright

posted by Duncan Williamson @ 1:28 PM