CRB checks - Safeguarding whom?

No one wants those in our society who are danger to young people to have access to school pupils and this necessitates some sort of criminal check, but I am concerned that there is an assumption that children are made safe simply because a CRB check has been carried out.

I have no problem with the idea of criminal checks on staff who work in schools, but how far do we take this?

The world of "safeguarding" becomes more ridiculous by the week - the latest contribution coming from Manor Community College in Cambridge:

"We do not allow anybody who is not fully CRB checked to enter the college premises or to work unsupervised. This includes volunteers, visitors and contractors. If you do not have a CRB (full disclosure) or you do not know what this is, please ensure that you contact a member of staff for further information.”

School demands visitors are checked by Criminal Records Bureau

Daily Telegraph 07/12/09

The Kafkaesque framework laid down by OFSTED ensures that pupils will only ever encounter adults at school who have been CRB checked. But this is a totally artificial state of affairs. Pupils who walk to school or travel on public transport will inevitably meet people who haven't had a CRB clearance - the vast majority of whom pose no risk to them whatsoever. But the OFSTED approach of insisting on regular CRB clearances on all who come into contact with pupils in schools is taking the "don't talk to stangers" routine to new limits. Drawing the line at the school gate ensures that, in the extremely unlikely event of a young person being endangered in some way it will fall outside the responsibility of the school/ Government. Sadly, this reflects a "not on my watch" approach to child protection.

Ultimately the Government's approach appears to have much more to do with safeguarding its own position than concern about young people.

Bebo introduce CEOP reporting button to protect children from Internet abuse.

Bebo, the social networking site which has a strong following among children and the younger teens, have introduced button which appears automatically under users' profile pictures, for users to log abuse directly to CEOP [the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre]. Clicking on the tool, opens a window inviting victims to log "violations of Bebo's terms of service" – including bullying, hate speech and sexually explicit content.

This is quite a radical step for a social networking site to take as it marks a move away from self-regulation, to reliance on the Government multi-agency system run by CEOP.

Facebook adopts a different approach, as outlined in their safety section, which is to investigate any complaints themselves. Their site maintains that "Facebook is solely responsible for complaint handling" although they do provide a link for users to contact the Independent Safety and Security Examiner (ISSE) regarding Facebook's complaint handling procedures.

There is pressure on Facebook and MySpace to follow Bebo's lead, but there are inevitably multi-jurisdictional issues here, which make this a much more complicated question than it first appears.

For further information see:

• More than 8 million young users get added safeupport as Bebo adopts ‘CEOP Report’ button. CEOP Press Release 18/11/09
• Facebook 'fails to protect children' Daily Telegraph 18/11/09
  
• Social networking sites criticised for failing to protect children Guardian 18/11/09
  

"Girls can have it all - but not all at once"

It is a great privilege, as a man, to be a member of the Girls' School Association. It is rare that a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, middle-aged, middle-class male finds himself in a minority, but that is my lot this week at the GSA conference in Harrogate. It is a privilege because GSA is one of the few places where educated eloquent women meet together on a national stage and discuss an agenda that unashamedly revolves around the education of girls and the place of women in society. Few men are given the opportunity to be a part of such an event. As with the coverage of women's sport in the back pages, the national press shy away from an informed debate about the thorny issue of the place of women in society and the question of balancing careers and family. The danger here is of parody - this is a debate that is easy to caricature or to polarise.

Thus Jill Berry, the President of the GSA is to be congratulated on having the courage to use her annual address to open up this important debate. It is a debate that we need to have in society; and the GSA conference is a fitting place for that debate to start. The debate has moved on from breaking "glass ceilings" - it is about preparing young women to exercise choice:

"We need to educate our girls so if they choose to be working mothers they need to get a grip on their guilt. If they choose not to work and to stay at home with their children, at least for a period of time, they shouldn't feel guilty. If they choose not to have children at all, they shouldn't feel guilt. If they find they are unable to have children, that's also something we need to educate them to be able to handle. That's what I wish for the girls we are educating."

Jill Berry, Presidential Address, 16/11/09

The GSA debate is informed all the more because most of the Heads themselves have faced those very choices and dilemmas themselves. These are very real choices. Each professional woman has to face those decisions, and schools have the responsibility to find a range of role models for girls to help them determine their own future.

I was very impressed a couple of months ago to meet an old girl of my school who had grappled with these very decisions. Her problem was that her professional work took up so much of her life that she didn't even have time to meet someone with whom to settle down. I listened in awe to her solution as she expounded how she and her friends, having worked in blue chip firms for fifteen or so years, were all setting up their own firms so that they could retake control of their lives and find the time to regain a work-life balance. It seemed to be working for her - three years on she had just got married and the business was going well. What struck me most was how what had been a problem had become a catalyst for a life-changing career move - that's what I call entrepreneurial.

Press Reports [not all accurately reported!]:

• Girls ‘must be taught risks of juggling career and motherhood’ Times Online 14/11/09
  
• Can girls have a career AND babies? No, and they shouldn't feel guilty, says leading headmistress Daily Mail 14/11/09
• Girls shouldn't expect to 'have it all' says school head Independent 13/11/09
• Having it all 'not realistic' BBC News 13/11/09
• Is it possible for an attractive, fashion-conscious girl to be taken seriously? DT 16/11/09
• 'You can be beautiful and still be a feminist' Independent 16/11/09
• Fashion not a betrayal of feminist ideals, says leading headteacher 16/11/09
• Make-up and attractive clothes don't make girls bimbos, insists headmistress 16/11/09
  

Raising public awareness of ContactPoint

Given the scale [and cost - £224m!] of the ContactPoint project, I have been surprised that it has received so little attention from both politicians and the press. This database will hold not only the details of every child under the age of 18 in the country, but also the name, address and telephone number of every parent. However, I am yet to meet anyone who has even heard of ContactPoint.

Thus the decision by The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to launch a publicity campaign to let families know how much information on them will be held by ContactPoint is to be applauded [See Daily Telegraph 27/12/2008]. There needs to be greater public awareness of this project so that it receives the appropriate amount of public and political scrutiny.

However, it would appear that Kensington and Chelsea are going further than just a publicity campaign, for they seem to be proposing to extend the facility to shield the data of vulnerable children to any parents who put in a request so to do. Thus, the child's name, date of birth, gender and unique ID number would still be visible on ContactPoint but other details would be hidden. This begs the question why this can't be the norm for all children. If the database will work for the most vulnerable children on a limited amount of data, why can't all of our data be hidden?

For more on ContactPoint see the Every Child Matters Website.

See also previous blog entry ContactPoint and Schools

ContactPoint and Schools

Coming out of the recommendations in light of the Victoria Climbié tragedy, ContactPoint is a DCFS project to create a central database that will be the "quick way for practitioners [schools, doctors, health workers etc] to find out who else is working with the same child or young person, making it easier to deliver more coordinated support." [DCFS Annex A: Q&A]

We in independent schools are being required to provide information about our pupils. Whilst it is tempting to see this as a defining step towards a Big Brother, ID cards etc or as another opportunity to share our personal data with a wider audience [see Daily Mail article 14/11/2008], there is behind this a much more reasonable rationale. It may be both worrying and surprising to learn that the Government at present do not know who is and who is not at school. The DCSF know who attend maintained sector schools and also those who are home-educated, however they cannot distinguish between pupils who go to independent schools and those children who are not being educated at all. By providing details of our pupils the DCSF will be able to do the sums and thus will be able to identify those vulnerable whose parents who have never registered their child at a school.

The data that we are required to provide is governed by the statutory instrument The Children Act 2004 Information Database (England) Regulations 2007. The personal information includes the following: name, current address, gender, date of birth, parental name and contact details.

There are three aspects to the way in which the Department is implementing this project that combine to undermine confidence in ContactPoint.

The DCFS are working with a concept of "fuzzy matching" of data - in other words ContactPoint relies on an algorithm to come up with the best fit - sadly this might not be right match. This is driven by the utilitarian idea of "useful rather than accurate information". This methodology might be acceptable if there were a rigorous data-checking procedure in place. However in the absence of any mechanism for schools to ensure that the data that they have provided has been correctly matched with the other data that the DCFS is receiving, it is deeply worrying. Mistakes in input, data transfer and matching inevitably will be made. Again, this methodology might be acceptable if there were a data field that could act as a robust unique identifier, thus allowing the database to create a perfect match. Despite every child in the country having a unique identifier, their NHS number; and, despite this number being one of the pieces of data to be held on ContactPoint, it is considered too sensitive and personal piece of information to be used in this way. The consequence of these three aspects of their methodology is that ContactPoint will not contain accurate data, which may undermine the whole usefulness of the exercise. If the DCFS is taking child protection and inter-service communication seriously, one might expect that a high level of accuracy of the data be a high priority

The DCFS' methodology may seem bizarre, but they do find themselves between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, in light of the Victoria Climbié and Child P cases, Government and local agencies are being attacked for not having effective lines of communication [I'll leave the sledge-hammer to crack nut arguments to others]. On the other hand, there have been a number of examples of Government departments not looking after our personal data. The inadequacies of the above methodology derive from an institutional paranoia that ContactPoint data will end up in the wrong hands. However, there are some indications that what the DCSF have come up with is neither going to protect children [which incidentally is not an explicit aim of ContactPoint] or to protect our data.

If the sole purpose of the database is better to facilitate communication between those who have contact with a particular child, then the DCFS only need sufficient information to be able to match school data about a pupil accurately with the information that ContactPoint is receiving from GPs and other practitioners. Independent schools routinely hold multiple addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses for a single pupil. We have a responsibility to both our parents and to our pupils to protect their personal data. Given the Government's record at looking after such data, I believe that we would be prudent to provide the DCFS with the minimum data required by the statute.

For more information: Baroness Delyth Morgan's letter to Independent School heads 25/11/2008