THE HMI helping to “rescue” Reid Kerr College in Paisley (FE Focus, page 32) has an unusually intimate style. “HMI parachutes in”, the headline introducing Iain MacRobert in the college’s newsletter, was not perhaps the happiest note to strike, particularly as 75 staff are set to lose their jobs.
But, as a former lecturer in psychology and New Testament studies, he clearly knows which buttons to press. His father, we are told, was station master of the old Princes Pier in Greenock, his wife (Janet, nice touch) is from the Isle of Wight, one daughter is training to be an FE lecturer (at a financially sound college, we trust) and another is manager of an Edinburgh clothes shop.
Mysteriously, he also tells us of his wide-ranging denominational contacts with the Catholic Church, the Episcopalian Church and the Church of Scotland.
He tries to indulge Rastafarians, too, revealing he once guarded Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia on a state visit to London. Selassie was clearly more fortunate than the likely victims at Reid Kerr.
