OPGRADES GLOBAL

Written by John Oliver Davies-Gay:

 

I was unlucky enough to encounter Opgrades approximately two years ago when I first moved to London and needed a job as quickly as possible. I saw an advert on Gumtree (which may now have been removed after I complained) offering potential earnings of £30-40,000 for dedicated and professional staff at a new education business. I then met a person (I certainly cannot call him a gentleman) claiming to be called Michael Zander who explained that his aim was to be bigger than English Town through 24 hour a day Internet English lessons. After the outrageously hyperbolic sales talk ( perhaps his only real speciality) , he then offered me a nine week internship for which I would be paid the slave wage of £600 going up to £900 after another month and so on. This was for 70 hours a week. My instincts were immediate distrust and I felt insulted, however I was short of money......

My first responsibilities when I started at Opgrades were to write the materials and tests for the wholly imaginary courses Michael and the sales team had already sold. The syllabus ( to divest that term of any meaning) was a mere collection of grammatical items classified ( without any cogent reason) as belonging to the various levels. These levels were continuously expanding in relation, I must suppose, to however much money management believed could be diddled out of students.

I also was expected to teach a six day week (7 every second week) often beginning at 8am and ending at 6/8 pm. In other words I was paid around £3 an hour whilst being expected to be satisfied with airy promises of a wonderful future.

Whilst I was working at Opgrades I had many occasions to witness student and staff discontent. I would see a so-called Senior Teacher and Centre Management Designee ( Michael appears to think that offering titles can replace wages) arguing with students who felt that they had been misled about what they had paid for, and any time I went into the staff room there was always the warming spectacle of a new salesperson being ritually humiliated and dismissed for not meeting sales targets. Most of these appeared to be school leavers who learned the hard way what COMMISSION ONLY means- probably the most valuable lesson that was ever taught.
Staff were constantly leaving ( was it that they didn't actually appreciate being berated by Michael and insulted by Marcela?) , and the atmosphere was little short of poisonous.

I had decided to leave before the so-called internship was up. The clincher was not being paid even the pittance that I was due because of some half-baked nonsense about my not providing the right bank details. I brought this up with Michael, only to be told that he would arrange this "in a few days". Needless to say, this wasn't good enough. I replied that I didn't feel I could trust Michael , and he then tried to play the indignant innocent, finally asking me why I didn't go. For once I had heard something sensible from him.

After four weeks of emailing the "Senior Teacher" and Marcela, I still hadn't received any money. I then took the company to the small claims court. Despite the obvious attempts to misdirect the court ( well why not when you misdirect everyone else?) by returning mail, I was eventually paid about £400 for approximately 160 hours.

I can therefore fully confirm the many other horror stories people have told me and which have been documented here. I will spare you the pitiful account of how I was made to listen to Michael's lecture on the philosophy of core excellence in teaching in which he had to ask how to spell several of the words and simply conclude by warning all potential students and staff to beware of fly by night education companies headed by unscrupulous, ill-educated, ill-mannered and aggressive sales people - of which this is the prime example. Michael has introduced a modern form of slavery into this country!

As a postscript , I have recently seen that this company are now advertising media internships. Perhaps they provide case studies.....

John Oliver Davies-Gay

OPGRADES GLOBAL: SCAMS AND BOGUS LECTURERS

     OPGRADES GLOBAL: SCAMS AND BOGUS LECTURERS

 

 

 

I posted a short piece on project management on linkedin a month or so ago, but I did not name the company referenced nor did I go into detail. I certainly did not itemise what actually occurred there and why I resigned-in part because of my own involvement in obtaining accreditation for the group. This, and the previous article (Project Management: When Organisational Resistance Causes Projects to Fail), refers to Opgrades Global and UKcct, a sister company, and tells of scams, other illegal activities, bogus unqualified lecturers/trainers and an assortment of unscrupulous activities.

I was uncertain whether to write this article. After I left I considered the matter done and dusted and that the group’s organisational flaws and inadequate personnel would not allow them to prosper. Three things changed my mind. One: meeting others who had worked there two years before and who had the same experiences and complaints regarding this group: two: stories I heard that corroborated my experience: three: after leaving the college (ran would be a better term) they are now stalking me on linkedin and sending me abusive emails. The time is right now for J’accuse.

 

How it started:

I received a call from Michael, the manager of the above, several months ago. I can only give his first name as no one seems to know his surname, nor where he lives, his background, or country of birth. It may be that ‘Michael’ is not actually his name either. I have heard from one source that his first name might be Zander. Another ex-employee suggests Michael Zander Zander. Who knows? When asked, he refuses to provide any information on the above. I do know that he and his caucus have been working together for at least 2 years. My first meeting with Michael occurred in a hotel near Putney station. He spent most of the time applauding my academic credentials, stating how well known and respected I was. I assumed he had read my papers. As I needed work at the time I allowed him to waffle on singing my praises and lauding, if excessively, my achievements. According to him, I was the greatest academic doctor in the land. He spoke to me about his two existing lecturers, Gary and Stephen, who he claimed were even greater academics than me-this was certainly an extraordinary exaggeration of their abilities.

My remit, according to Michael, was to write a book begun by Stephen Clark, one of the lecturers, whom he appeared to consider slothful, and to write academic courses and achieve accreditation.    

When I started working at the company I discovered that they principally subsisted on Paediatric Life-Saving courses, charging £50 each and ESOL courses but made thousands more on nannying, Project Management and business courses. All are in-house, and except for the ESOL courses, valueless to the students. For example, Project Management exams are conducted by PMP, the UK Government and Axelos for Prince 2 or Edexcel Pearson. Opgrades runs through the PMP book without an end exam, charging students hundreds of pounds.

To obtain a regular supply of customers, all from other countries, they advertise routinely in Metro and Evening Standard. Their paediatric and IELTS courses are delivered by Gary Vann (not his real name), from Armenia. He claims to have escaped from Armenia due to a political scandal he was involved in, but I have no idea if this is true. At other times he alluded to corruption charges while working for the Armenian national airline. The IELTS courses did not seem to follow the accepted processes. The ESOL courses are delivered by Stephen. The teaching is done in a grubby building in Putney.

The responses to the constant advertising are handled by a sales team on the ground floor. The sales team is supervised by Marcela, a rude, excessively aggressive, unbalanced and shouty woman from the Czech Republic.  Usually the salesroom is a busy hive of aggression, screaming and shouting. It is not conducive to study and learning. Marcela is rude to everyone, staff and students alike. As I later discovered, Marcela lives in one of the offices and has done so for approximately two years. In the office-cum-bedroom the accounts are kept. No one sees the accounts except for Marcela. My colleague, sent there by the owner, a successful Mortgage Broker, never found where the financial records are kept and therefore what goes to the owner and what does not. Clearly, Marcela and Michael may not keep records. I witnessed VAT being established for Opgrades Global two months ago even though it has been running for at least two years.

According to several of my colleagues at Opgrade and UKcct, the schools act as recruitment companies offering nannying and apprenticeship jobs that don’t exist. Once they arrive at the school the sales team tell the hopeful applicants, always short/long term stay foreigners with no knowledge of how English education works, that before they can get one of the jobs they have on their register they must do courses in English and Paediatric First Aid. Once they have done these courses they’ll be sold, pressured by the sales people, further courses. The victims often hand over thousands of pounds. At the end of each course the students are provided with certificates-made on the spot, in-house and totally worthless. Opgrades Global also provides apprenticeships, advertised on their website, which are also a scam.

Lecturers:

I mentioned the two lecturers, Gary and Stephen Clark, in my previous article demonstrating that neither are qualified. Here, I will go into detail.  

I know little about Gary Vann, except for the information Stephen gave me above. He is a very good teacher but is most certainly not an academic, as Michael continuously claims, constantly alluding to him ludicrously as a high-level academic with a superb intellect. Such a description testifies more to Michael’s ignorance of academia. After an acquaintance of 2 months, I could find no evidence of an academic background. His inability to actually write documents rather than copy and paste points in the opposite direction. Although he claims to have studied law at Harvard, his knowledge of law, certainly British law, is non-existent. If he requires a contract or legal document he goes to google and finds one there. When I was engaged in obtaining the first accreditation, he copied and pasted a document (on equalities if I remember) taken from a corporate website that had nothing to do with education or colleges. He employs cut and paste for everything. Stephen does too, indicating a similar lack of academic ability.

As my primary remit was to acquire accreditation, I needed evidence for both Gary and Stephen’s qualifications. Gary was difficult to research as I did not know his real name. I spent ages searching for evidence of Stephen’s qualifications but could find nothing except his name on a site for ESOL teachers. There was no mention there of higher qualifications, which seemed odd for someone advertising for students. In general conversation, he seemed commonplace mistaking facts for knowledge. He mentioned, on occasion, where he’d worked before. Many of these colleges I had worked at too and still knew some of the staff there. I checked Stephen’s credentials with them, and they confirmed that, to their understanding, he had only a Celta or TEFL, qualifications for teaching English to foreign students. This concerned me as if neither Gary nor Stephen had genuine qualifications it would make acquiring accreditation difficult.

Child Care Book:

Michael, see above, asked me to continue writing a book on Childcare begun by Stephen. I did not like taking over someone else’s work, but Michael gave the orders. The book seemed adequate and I had not then begun to doubt Stephen’s credentials. I added to the book and straightened out some of the phrases. After I gave in my notice, I agreed to complete the book. While finishing it off it occurred to me that given Stephen’s history it might consist of copy and paste, therefore unpublishable, and putting it through a plagiarism search engine I discovered to my horror that it was. He had taken up to 40% from internet sites. This meant I had to do feverish rewrites.

Gaining accreditation:

Once I succeeded in acquiring accreditation from Highfield, I then had to send in everyone’s degree certificates before Highfield would allow any of us to teach their courses.  Consequently, I requested Gary and Stephen to provide their certificates. I received a tentative response from Gary but nothing from Stephen. This confirmed my fears that both were unqualified. Worse, I realised belatedly that Michael intended the courses to go through Marcela in the sales room. In other words, they were to be sold off like sweets to anyone willing to give the money demanded. In the Paediatric First Aid classes were many students who were unable to speak English, but somehow they passed. You pays your money, as they say. The academic staff were it seemed to have no control over who was taught the courses, how, over what duration, nor how they would be assessed.

It was then I had a crisis of conscience. I couldn’t sleep at night. I’d realised the kind of people I was on the cusp of legitimising. I called a meeting to which Michael was invited. In the meeting I confronted Michael over what he intended to do with the accredited courses I was acquiring, pointing out that they should only be controlled by academics. I insisted on an academic room where essays, exam papers and students files could be kept and that these must not be kept in the sales office. I suggested room 46 where Marcela slept. Michael angrily agreed. I further pointed out that it was illegal for Marcela to use the office for living purposes, and her staying there could destroy all my good work. We, after the meeting, argued for hours.

Michael expects his staff to agree with him, not to argue with him.

Over the following weeks, Marcela did not leave her room and I realised I’d been lied to. I was then told another room was to be allocated, but that too was a lie.  Although Michael offered me a five month contract I resigned. I realised my reputation was at risk and staying longer would be intolerable. An added reason for my resignation was that Michael intended to give the completed book to Stephen and Gary, or, as I called them, copy and paste 1 and copy and paste 2, to critique. A shameful decision I thought.  

As Michael cannot handle rejection, that is people leaving the company, he became paranoid. I was asked to sign a document declaring I would not speak to anyone about what I had seen at the college. I actually had no intention at the time of doing so but signed it anyway. I was nevertheless anxious about the money owed to me as Michael had a habit of not paying people, finding any excuse to avoid doing so. A few days later one of my students told me that Gary had taken her into a room and attempted to force her into writing complaints about me. She had refused, declaring that I was an excellent teacher.

Stephen:

Although I have not covered everything that went on there as I expect some of my ex-colleagues from Opgrades Global to add their experiences, Stephen is worth dwelling on. Although claiming high-level qualifications he clearly has only a Celta, pretending nevertheless to be a professor, or his understanding of one. Often he merely produced laughter as few really believed his claims. Usually, he made things up, which could be annoying and disconcerting. I saw him by the Thames riffing on mudlarking as if it wasn’t commonplace knowledge and he’d recently discovered it. He was picking up coins left by the tide and declared them Roman, coined during the reigns of ancient Emperors that he named. An amateur detectorist wandered over and carefully explained that he was wrong and who the Emperors portrayed on the coins were. Next time he spoke about the coins, he pulled another two, entirely different, names out of the air.

He claimed expertise in everything. If you spotted a motor bike he declared he had been a motorbike champion; if you noted a particular bird, he was an expert in birds; I once told him I’d had two businesses but neither had done well, whereby he retorted by saying he’d had three businesses that had done marvellously. If that had been the case, I wondered why he was working at the school for below minimum wage. He told my son, visiting the centre, that he’d run an insect house in a zoo and had two llamas in his back garden. Added to these lies/fantasies, he’d swung the corpse of the last Tasmanian Tiger by the tail, mistaking exactly where the stuffed body was, and exclaimed that he was an expert in ancient history and palaeontology. He subsequently lectured me on the Chinese bringing bronze to the Late Bronze Age Near East down the Silk Road. Bronze is an alloy made up of tin and copper, and tin in the ancient world was found in present day Afghanistan, Anatolia and Cornwall. Also, the Silk Road was established during or after the reign of Alexander the Great some thousand years after. He also confidently exclaimed that the Hittites had animal headed gods (they didn’t) and nobody knew why (well, because they didn’t). I threw technical terms at him from palaeontology and they flew over his head with the swiftness of a missile.  Like Michael/Zander/or whatever, Stephen seems a Walter Mitty type.

 

Breaking laws:

1)      Pays well below minimum wage. Staff are required to work for ten hours each day without an assigned break. Their pay is usually below £5.00 an hour.

2)      Michael/Zander/or whatever often does not pay staff when they leave. Usually staff, unless they take matter to court, lose at least £1000.

3)      Scamming foreign long/short stay visitors out of thousands of pounds by offering jobs or apprenticeships that do not exist.

4)      Providing unaccredited, worthless courses to achieve the above.

5)      Advertising skilled, qualified lecturers when this is far from the case.

6)      Breaking every employment law so far devised by the government.

7)      Unscrupulous financial dealings.

8)      His greatest crime? Along with his minions, Gary and Stephen, he is giving British education a bad name.

Excuses-ISIS AND THE KORAN

Although clearly most Moslems are decent people who in many ways honour life, separating their beliefs from that of Isis, the truth of the matter is that Islamic terrorism is dependent on the Koran. It is a matter of interpretation.

1) The Koran is at times a violent book, asserting that god engages in violence and that Moslems have a right to employ violence. The Koran is of its time and describes the conflicts between Meccans (pagans) and the disciples of Mohammed. Its invocations of the right of defence is based within that period when Mohammed and his followers were fighting for survival.
2) Moslems put a lot of credence on the martial success of their ancestors, saying that this proves the authenticity of their god.
3) Mohammed was a religious warlord who massacred peoples. Exactly as Isis has done.
4) Moslems belief that the Koran is the end of all books. It is the final literary and philosophical statement. This can be considered true only if the IQ of the general population is extremely low. The Koran is poorly written, confused and badly structured. Surely a supreme being can do better? Moslem's are dissuaded or prevented from reading anything else so they do not read philosophy, or anything that raises issues or presents alternative ideas.
5) Moslems are not taught to critique the Koran but accept it as unvarnished truth. They therefore find evaluation, synthesis, cognition on a higher level difficult to impossible.
6) Islam has long presented an ideological fortress against outside influence but now-------
7) Isis is the direct result of Islam, Moslem populations, coming into the powerful influence of Western culture-Plato, Hume, Locke, Mills, Sartre, et  al. It is a defence against those influences. Although there has been considerable secular modification of Islam through this contact (there is nevertheless evidence of original Islamic tolerance), many Moslems becoming humanistic in approach, others have become deeply entrenched in their views.
8) Moslem societies put god before human life. This alone accounts for the proliferation of suicide bombers.

Conclusion: No matter how Moslems distance themselves from Isis, the terrorists' behaviour is modelled on the Koran.

The excuse that this all the fault of the West, although carrying some degree of truth, ignores history or manipulates it.
1) The USA's protection of Moslem populations in the Balkans.
2) The existence of extreme Islam in Europe in the very early 1990s. I came across several Moslems who voiced a determination during this period to make all of Britain follow Sharia law-a particularly barbaric justice system based not on Islam but very ancient Mesopotamian law codes. Extreme Moslem student groups 25 years ago in London universities who tried to force women from speaking with male students.
3) Bin Laden's rationale for instituting terrorism-that infidel armies were on holy soil, i.e Saudi Arabia. There of course at the request of the Saudi's to defend them against Saddam Hussein's approaching armies.

read the book

Islam is not Christianity and therefore does not have the same edicts against violence. Read the book!

In the book Mohammed/god explains how to gull unbelievers (you/me), convince them of your friendship and then, when the time is right, kill them. Read the book! Is that not evidenced by the terror attacks?

Of course most Moslems are decent, caring, etc, but they hold different values. Islam has little involvement or respect for intellectuality and brings little if any discussion or investigation to what its beliefs are or its roots.

In Islam violence is permissible.

AS=poem

As they grew older they grew further away

Withholding their love

Remote, with apparently little to say

No words, no tears, no kind of stuff

Falling from their distant lives

Living with new thoughts, lovers, wives.

A troupe of sons, gambling with time!

 

Alexander was a rotten son of a brilliant father

Misled by a mother’s lies

Into an oedipal outrage. Spurred to violence, rather

Then be a man he became a legend, pursued by biting flies.

Betrayal often leads to success,

The betrayer a psychological mess.

 

The love of a child evaporates

Evident in the lives of kings

The urge for power saturates

Ignores duty, gratitude, those kind of things.

But hell! So what?

We once, objects of their beaming infant smiles, received such a lot.

 

OK, Richard the First left his father to die alone,

John ripped the money from the dead man’s purse,

They then fought each other for the throne

Making a family feud undeniably worse.

Throughout history, the mothers taking new ambitious lovers

Caused greater angst amongst whole generations of brothers.

 

Families are rarely friends: brother fights brother

Sister quarrels with sister, battling incessantly,

Despising each carefully chosen lover

Examining each other critically.

The success of one initiates gloom,

A show of brilliance, a thunderous rain-wrenched boom.

  

Compared to great and legendary figures

Our problems are played out beneath a dimmer light

We drown our thoughts with liquor

Squabble like screeching bats in the night

No grabbing of swords, fastening of armour, beribboned horses

Our mundane arguments have tiny causes.

 

 

 

PARIS OUTRAGE

The great and horrifying tragedy in Paris cannot be laid at the door of Moslems per se, but must be laid at the door of Islam. Why?

The Koran at times reads like a war manual, that is how to deal with those who oppose you, or in Mohammad's eyes god. How god (Muhammad's concept of god) requires you to live your life.

The version of Islam, which has some provenance in the Koran, that underlies these outrages can be found in many countries in Asia and the Near East. There it is normal. Imagine Saudi Arabia conquering Europe and imposing its violent values! Beheadings in the street, misogyny, intolerance and arrogance.

These attacks, directed towards football grounds, clubs, theatres, are against the young and having fun. In this version of Islam, you must not enjoy yourself. The only acceptable form of life is conformity, non-thinking and death!

We must stop making allowances for religion. Parts of the Koran read like Mein Kampf. Parts of the Torah  are recipes for fascism, parts of the gospels are silly. Real wisdom is found elsewhere.

Beautiful Moroccan

BEAUTIFUL MOROCCAN

Dressed in black, dark eyes amused
She strolls into a room
With the specialised tread
Of a femme fatale,
Tossing her streaming hair in arrogant joy.
Her perfect body
Contains the calm and unexpected force
Of the sea, shifting in a moment between

Reason and fury.
She graces the men with sure-footed Arabic,
Stark, sibilant, passionate words
Laughing like a poem.
A Moroccan beauty,
Guedra dancing in the sun,
From the desert coloured mosque of Casablanca
Punctured by the worship Of 70,000 songs,
To the unremitting souks of Marrakesh,
Her complexity
Emboldened by the courage
Of poets.

She has a silence in her intellect
Such as few have,
Unusual evidence of a soul
In a world of franchises,
Her past imaginings deeper and wider
Than that of her peers,
Dancing to fast Gharnati rhythms,
Beneath imagined Andulusian sunsets
And glowing skies.
An effervescent scintillating gasp of fervent
Desert air, beating across her limbs
Moving gently towards silence.

EL, YHWH, ALLAH

EL, YHWH, ALLAH-

El the primordial god is with us still

Read in Academia.edu

AFRAID OF THE RIFLE FIRE!

 

Afraid of the rifle fire, he had

Crouched all day in the dirt,

A dull fellow at the best of times.

Ricocheting bullets bolted to the air

Surfing the wind, screaming

Abuse like ill-disciplined relatives

Arriving for an impromptu visit.

One shattered his head-there it was,

There were its remnants-

Greasy insubstantial grey matter that

Contained his soul. 

An end to drinks in the pub

The love of his wife

The smiles of his children

Holidays in Benidorm with the In-Laws

Paella by the swimming pool.

One bullet, not even new, put an end to a contented life.

casual embrace-poem

 

 

Mutual embrace severed
Out of politeness, leg
Removed from leg we pulled
Apart desiring separation
In the afterglow.


An affair just begun
Is like a morning
After a night of rain, the
Sun sliding through gaps in the
Ceremonious cloud,
Serene, reassuring and secretive.


It was not yet love,
Just lovemaking.
A curious investigation
Of a stranger, hardly known,
Of unspecified views, who
Has not yet freely spoken.


The routine had long ago been fixed,
Inconsequential phrases over coffee,
Denying breakfast, smiles
Without intent. Holding hands
At the door, a kiss,
And then the regretful goodbye.
A voice remembered as a sigh
A movement as pleasure,
No other memory but the callow scent
Of brief uncertain intimacy.

 

 

 

 

the priests of chilon castle

Read-ISSUU Publications. Online

A Bangla friend, a Hindu.

A Bangladeshi friend and I were discussing the situation in his country.

He is Hindu, therefore part of a minority there. He informed me that both Hindus and Christians are leaving the country fearful of the threat of Islamic aggression. I responded by pointing out the myth many Moslems are encouraging, that they possess parts of the world and that other faiths cannot exist there too.

We discussed Moslem narrow-mindedness and the contradictions in the Koran, first Mohammad speaks, then supposedly god, and how poorly written it is. I pointed out how depressed I became working in Moslem areas, such as Shadwell. Why? They do not seem to enjoy life. They do not sing, play music, dance and laugh. They have no knowledge, dependent upon a book full of violence and fantasy. (Look at the stories dealing with Jesus and Mary).

My friend referenced human evolution and that somehow Moslems are more backward. Well, maybe. Certainly, the religion suffocates analysis.

The Childcarer's Bible-ISSUU publications

All you need to know about childcare, especially if you wish a career in the field.

Good luck!!!

Extract from Priests of Chilon Castle

The PRIESTS OF CHILON CASTLE

 

Published 27/9/15. A dark tale in an unknown land. ISSUU Publications.  

 

 

Darkness quietly slides into the room

As the sun falls away

Each object covered in paralyzing gloom

By the end of the day.

Within its crumbling confines, flowers rarely bloom

And every crevice predicts unsightly doom.

 

Grim warrior priests here reside

Within Chilon’s high walls, glowering

Over the valleys where timorous peasants hide

Where wheat grows in contrary abundance, towering

Trees softly move from side to side

Like flotsam in a powerful tide.

 

Seduced by thoughts of death

The sweet call of violence

The priests would ride throughout the land’s breadth

Killing in awesome silence.

Unable, even if they wished, to quench

Their terrible lust; driven by its very stench.