No sooner had Richard Wilding been returned to Glaisdale School in Nottingham than staff at Hebburn Comprehensive on Tyneside threatened to
No sooner had Richard Wilding been returned to Glaisdale School in Nottingham than staff at Hebburn Comprehensive on Tyneside threatened to strike over Graham Cram.The second case was temporarily resolved on Monday but yesterday Graham’s father, Peter, said he planned to go to court to clear his son’s name. The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, which led the action at Glaisdale and Hebburn schools, wants them abolished but the NAHT has not gone that far.Ministers have been forced into more immediate action on exclusions by recent event. The association wants appeals panels to have legally qualified chairmen and independent members, to have to justify their decisions and to have to take into account the needs of the whole school rather than just the excluded pupil. “The Government is looking at ways in which the system might be refined to minimise the instances where reinstatement decisions are seriously questionable,” she said.The move, which could be announced within the next few weeks, will form part of a wide-ranging initiative on school discipline disclosed last month.Mrs Shephard also plans to make it more difficult for parents to refuse permission for their children to be kept in detention, and to allow schools to suspend pupils for longer periods before being forced to permanently exclude them.Next week David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, will meet officials at the department to press for more radical action. As the family of one boy threatened legal action to clear his name, education officials said they were considering legislation to make it more difficult for an appeals panel to overturn a school’s decision to expel a pupil.
Richard Wilding, a 13 year-old from Nottingham who was involved in 30 disruptive incidents in two terms, and Graham Cram, a 12 year-old from Tyneside who was alleged to have attacked a teacher, were reinstated by appeals panels after being excluded from school.In both cases staff threatened to strike if the children returned and in both cases a compromise was eventually reached under which they would be taught in isolation.Last night a spokesman for Gillian Shephard, the Secretary, of State for Education, said she understood the schools’ difficulties even though such cases were not common. Ministers are planning to make it more difficult for families of disruptive pupils to force schools to take them back, after teachers twice threatened action over disruptive pupils.
“It was something I was good at and I found it a satisfying occupation in problem-solving.”. The photograph was posed “on a perfectly safe piece of road,” he said.Mr Jefferson said there had never been an accident on any of the previous mine-clearance missions he had been on, including work in Angola, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan.St Dunstans, a charitable organisation which works with blind people injured “in the course of their duty for the nation”, contributed to Mr Jefferson’s legal costs.Before the Kuwait accident, Mr Jefferson had worked for three years as a freelance mine-disposal expert, earning about pounds 60,000 a year “It wasn’t for the danger,” he said yesterday. The unit was also expected to “scavenge” for equipment left by retreating enemy forces.On one such operation, Mr Jefferson entered a mines dump, where he trod on a mine. The unit’s first-aid equipment comprised “a few plasters and some aspirin” and it was three days before he was flown to Britain for treatment.William Norris, for the defence, had argued that Mr Jefferson was a “cavalier operator” who took unnecessary risks. On Monday, the defence produced a picture of Mr Jefferson on a “minefield” in Afghanistan wearing no protective clothing. But this turned out to be a publicity photograph for a humanitarian organisation he had worked for, teaching local people to recognise and deal with mines.
Mr Jefferson and three other team members had been forced to try to dispose of Iraqi mines by attempting to set fire to them using makeshift apparatus including petrol in a Coca- Cola can. It is a moral victory against Royal Ordnance.” His barrister, Andrew Hogarth, had told the court: “Had he been wearing protective goggles, he would have kept his sight.”No equipment or protective clothing was provided for the Royal Ordnance employees in the Gulf, Mr Hogarth said. Damages were estimated to be “substantially above pounds 1m”.”As a soldier I expected to be expendable but I never expected to be expendable for profit,” he said yesterday. Mr Jefferson, who was also lost a finger in the accident, said he would use some of the money for treatment “But this is not a sob story. Royal Ordnance had told Mr Jefferson, a former Royal Engineers, captain, he “could get on the next plane home” if he refused to work without safety equipment, the High Court heard.His compensation claim was halted yesterday after Royal Ordnance agreed to pay 75 per cent of his damages, with costs estimated at pounds 500,000.
A former soldier who was blinded and lost a leg clearing Gulf war mines without any safety equipment yesterday won a compensation case estimated to be worth more than pounds 1m. The case opens the way for several more against Royal Ordnance, a subsidiary of British Aerospace, which had won a pounds 60m contract from Kuwaiti to clear minefields laid by retreating Iraqis. Of the 110 people employed in clearing the mines, eight were killed and at least 13 seriously injured.
Paul Jefferson, 39, was blown up in Kuwait in 1991. It is as simple as that,” he said and rejected the application.Mr Croxford described Ms Kokorevica as “a rich, young Eastern European travelling with a cat – nothing more”. She was a company director of Vigo Stores (UK) Ltd, which rented and leased luxury cars, and her cat was her constant travelling companion.
She earned a salary of up to pounds 140,000 a year.She told immigration authorities she would be staying at Claridges Hotel in London, because the pounds 1.2m property she had just bought to stay in during business trips to the UK, was unfurnished.When her cat, who had been travelling as hand luggage, was taken away because of the UK’squarantine laws, she became distressed.Officials worried about her ostentatious wealth contacted the organised crime squad, after a luggage search revealed she had enormous receipts for gold and jewellery.A solicitor Bernard Andonian, representing Ms Kokorevica, described Dana as “one of the world’s best travelled cats” who had been to Russia, Switz- erland and other countries But not, it seemed, to Britain.. He said her obvious wealth and East European background seemed to make officials think she was linked to organised crime, and was rather like Blofeld, the cat-loving arch-villain of James Bond films.But the judge, describing the case as extraordinary, said the official had not come to an unlawful decision, as Ms Kokorevica had failed to satisfy the authorities she was genuinely in the country on business.”Business people don’t usually come with cats. The “extraordinary” tale of a very wealthy young businesswoman from Latvia, her Persian cat and the suspicious immigration officer, unfolded in London’s High Court yesterday. Vita Kokorevica was “unreasonably” refused entry to the UK after doubts were raised that she was a genuine business visitor, because she was travelling with her pet, named Dana, a judge heard.
Tom Croxford, appearing for the 22-year-old company director, asked Mr Justice Latham to quash an immigration officer’s refusal to allow her to enter the country last September at Gatwick Airport. Labour voted for it on the second reading, but there were free votes on two key amendments – for keeping the principle of fault in divorce, which was defeated, and an 18-month cooling off period, which was agreed.Yesterday Lord Mackay bowed to a Labour call for an advisory board to advise on implementation of the Bill.Lord Mackay said: “My experience of the Marriage Working Party, the Children Act Advisory Committee and the Ancillary Relief [financial provision] Advisory Group has led me to conclude that it is a good idea in principle, and it will be very useful in practice, to set up a new, widely-representative board to advise me on research into supporting marriage and preventing marriage breakdown, and the implementation of the Family Law Bill.”The board’s functions will include advising on the design of pilot schemes, monitoring the schemes’ progress and overseeing the operation of the Bill once it is enacted..
