Schools vet parents for Christmas festivities

[drummer]

The Sunday Times
November 29, 2009

Parents who want to accompany their children to Christmas carol services and other festive activities are being officially vetted for criminal records in case they are paedophiles.

In the latest expansion of the government’s child protection agenda, parents are checked against a database of people banned from working with children for sex offences and for other reasons.

Among those affected are parents at a village primary school who have been told they must be vetted before they can accompany pupils on a 10-minute walk to a morning carol service at the local church.

Other primaries have instituted vetting for parents attending Christmas discos on school premises. Some schools require checks on parents who volunteer to walk with children from the school to post letters to Father Christmas.

Parents will have to provide schools with proof of their identity, such as a passport, as well as their address, so their records can be checked.

Graham McArthur, headmaster of Somersham primary school in Cambridgeshire, said checks on the two dozen parents volunteering to walk his 330 pupils to the carol service at nearby St John’s church on December 17 were necessary — even though they will be accompanied by teachers and a police community support escort when crossing the road.

“We rely quite a lot on parental volunteers. It is a community school and parental engagement is very important to being part of the community,” McArthur said.

“For the carol service they will need clearance [from the banned list] which is basically something we can do on the day. You need to see details of who they are, where they live and make several phone calls.

“Parents accept it’s about safeguarding the welfare of children. They accept it only has to be done once and it’s a necessary chore.”

The requests are the latest evidence of schools’ mounting anxiety over how far they have to go to satisfy the pervasive effects of the government’s child protection agenda.

New rules state that from next year people working with children “frequently” will have to be vetted and registered. Until the registration scheme comes into force, government advice to schools is that checks should be carried out only on parents whose volunteer work brings them into contact with children at least three times a month.

Some schools are opting to err on the side of caution and are enforcing vetting systems for one-off activities.

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University and the author of a report on paranoia over child protection, said: “Once you institutionalise mistrust, you incite people to take these things further and further, finding new areas to implement criminal record checks.

“It becomes a badge of responsibility and a symbolic ritual. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense.”

A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said some schools were being overcautious: “We want to take a common-sense approach to this and allow head teachers to use their professional judgment and experience.”

A primary school in Norwich is insisting on the checks for parents who want to attend its disco.

Furedi said: “I also know of a primary school with a Christmas disco which is requiring checks to be made on parents who volunteer to help out.”

Anastasia de Waal, head of family and education at Civitas, the think tank, said: “It sets up this really negative relationship, it can put off adults and gives children the message that either adults don’t want to be involved in their lives at all, or that adults have all got to be intensely mistrusted and you can’t have faith in anybody.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/po...936351.ece

[Melchor]

I think I'm going to start a charity. Spines for Britons. These stories are always coming out of the UK.