“That’s it, I’ve had enough.” Santa Claus sounded adamant as he shook the snow off his boots. “Enough of what, dear?” Mrs Claus replied sympathetically. “Your toy round? I suppose it must be getting a bit much.”
“No, no, that’s fine. It’s the quality assurance I can’t stand.”
“Quality assurance? Of the toys? Or is it something to do with your being chairman of Snowland school governors again?” Santa groaned as he parked his great boots by the fire, watching the snow on them melt. It was bad enough having had the annual governors meeting on Christmas Eve, just before his mammoth journey across the world. Now there was to be an additional get-together.
“Some of these people can’t have a home to go to,” he protested. “We’ve always managed to do the business in one meeting a year. Now we’ve got to have a special meeting about quality assurance on New Year’s Eve, 10 o’clock at night. What a stupid idea.”
Santa eased himself back into the soft enveloping luxury of an enormous armchair. He looked out of the window at his giant sledge. Where a few days ago there were thousands of neatly-packed presents, it was now stacked high with massive piles of paper. Large snowflakes fell gently on their peaks, forming thick layers of white on white.
“Just look at it. There are forms to fill in about the teachers, the children, the buildings, the library. We’ll have to count all the snowflakes landing on the school next.”
“Steady on, dear, you might give them some ideas,” replied Mrs Claus philosophically.
Snowland school governors trooped obediently into the resources centre where the head, known as “Uriah” for his unctuous manner, awaited them with glee. “I’d like to thank you personally for my performance bonus,” he intoned over and over, shaking individuals vigorously by the hand, drowning each in oil.
Santa could feel the irritation rising. Every year Uriah conned them into upping his salary with some far-fetched yarn about fresh demands, stress, overload, anything. One year he even said he would be leaving, thus securing a huge bonus entirely out of relief. Needless to say his departure never materialised. “Got to put the school first,” he replied without a hint of irony, when asked why he was still around.
Santa cleared his throat: “Item one, threshold assessment. Can I ask the head to bring us up to date?” “I’m delighted to say that we had a 100 per cent success rate. Everyone got their pound;2,000 bonus.”
“What, even Mr Hardcastle?” Mrs Farnes Barnes shrieked in her high-pitched voice, honed to a fearsome whine after years of childhood elocution lessons. “You’ve always said you wouldn’t pay him in washers, er, whatever they are.”
“Ah yes, I did try to withhold it, but I’m afraid the external assessor overruled me.”
“Who was the external assessor?” Santa asked. “It must be difficult to find anyone willing to come all the way to Snowland.”
“It was Mr Hardcastle, actually.”
“Mr Hardcastle?” Mrs Farnes Barnes soared like an eagle up the decibel scale. Santa could feel she was winding up to make one of her legal points. Ever since he had delivered her a Perry Mason video, she had fancied herself as an expert.
“Mr Hardcastle? He is not external, so how can he adjudicate in his own case? It’s ultra vires, chairman. I rest my case.”
“No one outside Snowland wanted to do the assessor’s job. Mr Hardcastle sent away for the official 125 OHP transparencies and trained himself,” Uriah replied lamely. “He stood outside my study window when he talked to me and insisted that made him external, claimed it said as much on OHP transparency 112.”
Santa began to feel impatient. There were still several hundred pupil targets to go through.
“Look, we must move on to the pupil part of our quality assurance. Let’s make a start on the alphabetical list. What can you tell us about Anthony Abbot?” Uriah preened himself. “In return for his threshold bonus, Mr Hardcastle has calculated all our targets. Anthony Abbot has been set a target of 11 A* grades at GCSE next summer.”
“But he’s only six years old.”
“Is he? I mean, yes, er, we’re trying out this new value-added approach and I think Mr Hardcastle may not have quite got the hang of it yet.”
Santa looked on in despair. Quality assurance. He mouthed the two words to himself. Both sounded hollow. Outside the window two of his reindeer, Dancer and Prancer, waited patiently alongside two inspectors, Wally and Clueless, who would eventually deliver all the completed forms to the Ministry of Paper. It was going to be a long night.
