ACCA embarrassment
(Phil Baty, The Times Higher Education Supplement, 21 April 2000)
A second major embarrassment has hit the Association of Chartered Certified
Accountants following The THES's report that the Higher Education Funding
Council has been examining a past record of suggested mismanagement at
Hull University by ACCA deputy president Moyra Kedslie, who recently left
the university. Graham Carr, until last year the ACCA's representative
on the International Federation of Accountants, and a long-standing council
member, has been implicated in a serious case of racial discrimination
at a private higher education provider, the School of Finance and Management
in London. The THES reported last month that the London South Tribunal
had found that the school, and its parent company Nord Anglia plc, had
unfairly dismissed former SFM head, Srian Perera. Mr Carr, director of
professional and academic training at Nord Anglia, presided over the unfair
dismissal as chair of Mr Perera's appeal hearing. The tribunal said:
"Mr Carr conducted the appeal without a copy of the disciplinary procedure
when the applicant was raising numerous breaches of it. Consequently the
applicant's complaints
about the process were, we think, brushed aside." Mr Carr allowed his
Nord Anglia colleague Brian Richbell to sit in, and although he was not
a decision-maker, "his private opinions were allowed to affect the outcome".
The tribunal judge also outlined a quality control "crisis" at the School
of Finance and Management. The University of Lincolnshire and Humberside
withdrew its accreditation of the SFM's degrees in 1999. "As we understand
it," the tribunal said, "there had been criticisms of SFM's examination
procedures in that examination papers had not been set or marked on time."
There had also been "criticisms of SFM's internal procedures relating to
examinations... by the external validating body." Mr Perera was not responsible
for academic matters, the tribunal said.