Reassurances were none of the sort

Aclimate of openness and transparency. Complaints addressed through a proper process. The restoration of confidence among parents and staff. These reassurances greeted parents of children at the Simon Langton Girls’ Grammar in Canterbury in the summer as its governing body and Kent County Council tried to draw a line under the school’s botched attempt to become an academy last year.

Our revelations this week show how disgracefully empty these words are.

The first statement, we know now, is open to ridicule given how the county council has tried to conceal the reality of the affair.

As to the second, who knows in this tale of cover-up and evasion whether it was ever either the school’s or the county council’s intention of honouring such a pledge? All we know is what has taken place is far from proper process. And as far as the third goes, only a someone living in cloud cuckoo land could think that abandoning disciplinary action in these circumstances and then suppressing an independent report and the school’s activities would ever amount to a restoration of confidence.

Elsewhere in this newspaper we report that next week likely sees the start of the process to create a single east super council out of four local authorities.

Some suggest it will only succeed if KCC is scrapped and a unitary authority is created in its stead.

Given what we’ve learnt this week about KCC’S attitude to those it employs, those it educates and those who pay their taxes for its existence, then its death cannot come too soon.