Talk:Verulam School
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Semi-Protection - the recent fire will mean lots of people will be editing the page - This page needs to be semi protected. 86.5.86.133 (talk) 21:39, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
I don't think semi is neccessary. I will keep an eye on it. I am a fairly experienced editor under my username, which I am not using to stay anonymous.
I can post the links to the sources, but I can't actually tag the material, as I can't actually remember how to tag sources.82.21.217.200 (talk) 21:46, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Sources[edit]
As promised above, here are the sources. These cover most of the facts. The praise is either in the comments to the stories, or on facebook groups which I can't cite.
http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/4150609.Verulam_school_fire__a_mystery_/
The comments are full of praise for the school staff, and the story itself gives various basic facts.
First story that broke the story.
Has the time when the fire was first logged.
Has time of first call to fire service and and eyewitness report. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.217.200 (talk) 21:57, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Semi[edit]
I realy think semi is unecessary here. I am a bit rusty, but policy certainly used to be not to protect or semi protect just because a page would get a lot of interest. This prevents people enlarging the page and adding useful content.
Schools will always have their pages vandalised, that is why my watchlist if full of school pages.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am the editor who was putting forward the same arguments using my ip before the semi. Dolive21 (talk) 22:13, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
NPOV[edit]
I think I have fixed the majority of the glaring NPOV violations. It could probably do with a fresh eye going over it and rewriting some bits.Dolive21 (talk) 22:23, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Fire[edit]
Is it really of relevance that a tiny minority of the students have commented on an online article that they felt the school dealt with the situation well? there's no proof that these are the opinions of students, indeed, is it relevant whether STUDENTS felt the acting head dealt with the situation well? Infact, the Acting Head has been greatly criticized for knowing that the fire system was damaged and doing nothing about it by students in the same sources cited above. Installedpear (talk) 22:43, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Those students are representative of the views of all the pupils. But I get your point about the relevance of the comments. I think their views should probably be represented, but if it can't be done in a NPOV way, it will have to go. As to whether the views of students is relevant, if the students did not have confidence in the staff then the evacuation would have been chaos, and the students were the only people who could stand back and see the total effect of the staff's handling of the situation. The police and fire service were busy with the fire and the staff were dealing with headcounts.
I am aware of the issues with the alarm, but it is by no means certain that he was in any way at fault. It is possible that someone at the school pretty seriously dropped the ball, but it is also possible that the schools electrical system, which had been having problems over the last few weeks, failed to supply power to the alarm at the vital moment.
I am sure that the local press, the governors, probably the LEA and possibly the HSE or the fire service will conduct detailed inquiries, and until we see the results of these we cannot tell for certain what happened. At the moment all we have is a few press reports written in the heat of the moment and eyewitness testimony. Dolive21 (talk) 23:23, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Most of the quotes from the newspaper comment section were written by sixthform students and does not represent the whole situation —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.209.68 (talk) 01:01, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
It has been suggested that the fire itself affected the wiring for the alarm system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tobyketley (talk • contribs) 12:24, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Actually, it is disputed on both the newspaper comment section and on the facebook group that the fire was handled well by staff and headteacher. There is a youtube video showing that this is not the case. Also many of the comments were written with a vested interest that the school remains open for exams or by teachers. The school website on the morning after of the fire said it was still open showing that the communications with pupils was not good. i believe the last line of the article should either be balanced or removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.209.68 (talk) 19:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Re the above comment concerning the two teenagers, newspaper reports say two teenagers have been charged in connection with the fire; this seems pretty factual. As regards the alleged misplaced support by "vested interest" for the handling of the immediate aftermath of the fire by staff and the acting headteacher, and the supposed evidence of the video, I have to say "vested interest" works both ways and unfortunately disaffected students may well wish to score points against their school. Contrast this with the inclusion on some message boards of some very vocal support for the staff and head, apparently from students of the school. So it works both ways and I wouldn't place any reliance on these sorts of anonymous (and predictable) comments, whichever side they are on. I don't think a Wikipedia article on a school should get bogged down in such stuff anyway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Observer&Pedagogue (talk • contribs) 12:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Alumni - reverting[edit]
User reverted my changes to alumni - I have asked why on user's talk page. Tacyarg (talk) 18:36, 20 January 2018 (UTC)