‘I’m a businessman, I’m not a SEN specialist’: who is LIFE Wirral CEO Alastair Saverimutto?
The rugby player turned school CEO behind Wirral’s SEN school scandal
Dear readers — the reaction to the BBC’s Panorama documentary about LIFE Wirral, a school for children with learning difficulties, has been one of shock.
In the documentary, the school’s staff boast about their abusive behaviour to an undercover reporter and describe their use of unnecessary force. In one particularly difficult-to-watch moment, a senior staff member admits he once said he would drown a student in a bath “like a kitten”.
LIFE Wirral has now announced it will close with immediate effect. But questions remain. Like this: how exactly did the man in charge, ex-rugby player Alastair Saverimutto, manage to get public money for his school, despite having no former experience in education?
The Post has been looking into Saverimutto, and we’ve uncovered several details about his past that raise questions concerning the due diligence process for Special Educational Needs (SEN) schools and those in charge of running them. Over the past two decades, Saverimutto has had a long series of quixotic business ventures in rugby, football and otherwise. In that time, he has racked up thousands of pounds of debt — some of which The Post believes relates to his own son’s private tuition fees from ten years ago.
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The rugby player turned school CEO behind Wirral’s SEN school scandal
By Abi Whistance
“I’m an entrepreneur, a businessman, I’m not a SEN specialist, a mental health specialist or a teacher.”
Those words were spoken by Alastair Saverimutto, a former rugby player and the CEO of LIFE Wirral, a school in Wallasey that specialises in caring for children with Special Educational Needs (SEN), during a recent Panorama documentary.
Saverimutto set up the LIFE Wirral school in 2021. An independent school for boys and girls in the North West aged 11 to 18, it claimed to offer a “different type of individualised education”, supporting children with learning difficulties such as autism and ADHD. Places at the school were funded by the local authority, Wirral Council, who paid LIFE Wirral between £50,000 and £150,000 a year per child, depending on the kind of support they needed.
The school received a ‘Good’ OFSTED rating in 2022 — yet just two years later, Panorama’s investigation revealed shocking behaviour from its staff. BBC reporter Sasha Hinde went undercover at the school, posing as a teaching assistant looking for work experience, where she witnessed violence towards children as well as bullying. Senior members of staff were caught on camera bragging about using unnecessary force: one told Hinde that he “threw [a child] all over the place”, but that “on the paperwork it was like I guided him effectively”, while another admitted that he once called a pupil a “flid”, adding “it’s a school of r*tards” and the children are “so f*cking thick”.
After the Panorama broadcast last week, LIFE Wirral announced that it was permanently closing. There is now an ongoing police investigation into the way vulnerable children were treated.
Saverimutto’s motivations for setting up LIFE Wirral weren’t exactly discreet. On camera, he laid out his plan to open 100 schools and create the first “billion-pound” education network of SEN schools in the country with “minted” head teachers. He’d looked at the stark rise in the number of children in need of educational support in independent schools in the UK (up by 160% in just eight years) and had seen a business opportunity.
But why was Saverimutto allowed to set up LIFE Wirral in the first place? The Post has delved into Saverimutto’s business past and found an alarming record of business failures and unpaid debts. All of this information would have been available had due diligence been performed before he was allowed to set up LIFE Wirral in 2021. And yet within two years, he had been paid over £2 million by the local authority for places at his school.
While Saverimutto may have had no prior experience running a school, a dive into his past reveals a long list of largely unsuccessful business ventures that may shed light on his motivations for setting one up. Born in 1970 as the eldest of three sons, Saverimutto attended St Anselm’s College in Birkenhead before becoming a professional rugby player. By the late 80s he was playing for Bath, Bristol, Gloucester and Coventry, and he went on to become the director of rugby at New Brighton RFC in 2001. Three years later he traded in the oval ball for a round one to join Everton FC, working as the football club’s commercial manager for another five years.
It is here that things get interesting. In 2008, Saverimutto was made the CEO of AFC Bournemouth. Bournemouth is now in the Premier League, but back then it was in financial trouble. Never media shy, Saverimutto was interviewed by the Bournemouth Echo shortly after his appointment and bragged to the reporter that “millions” had been put into the club. In that same interview, he seemed to contradict himself, saying the amount put into the club “is not far off a seven-figure sum”. Shortly after that article was published, it was confirmed that AFC Bournemouth had entered into administration.
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