Rob Shorrock

Anxiety and over zealous application of guidance on safeguarding children is creating a sealed environment in many schools. Head teachers and governors wary of falling foul of OFSTED, are restricting access for parents and other adults into schools.

My son’s primary school is a case in point. Parents were issued with a letter saying that they should not come into the playground when dropping children off. And the children should go straight inside when they are dropped off at the school gates. Apparently, it was difficult to distinguish between parents in the playground and the slight risk of predatory adults who use the crowd as cover. Also, there were concerns that some children were being dropped off early and left totally unsupervised.

Apart from denying children the right to play in the morning, the solution to this ‘problem’ is to exclude the adults, rather than to look imaginatively at ways in which the school and parents could work together to solve a problem.

Another case in point is the decision of the Central Technology College in Grantham to not allow adult users of its commercially run gym and fitness centre to use it during school hours (something which they had been doing for years, it seems, with few problems). The Head teacher and governors were concerned that Ofsted would penalise them for allowing adults on site unsupervised. The solution was again blunt: ban the adults.

 OFSTED are often cited as the reason for these decisions by helpless heads and governors. In fact, OfSTED guidance talks about the proper management of risk and that schools should have systems in place to anticipate and manage risk. Indeed, I was advised by OfSTED that there could be other solutions to allowing adults access to a facility during the school day and the school and local authority could look at ways that this could be done within the local safeguarding policy. They decided not to do so.

 The other concern is the future of extended schools provision. There is a duty on schools by 2012 to be offering services and facilities to the community, including adult education and the use of sports facilities, as well as having clubs and afterschool care for children. This becomes increasingly difficult if schools pursue policies of adult exclusion. How can be schools be regarded as hubs of the community if the community is viewed with suspicion?

 Managing risk is the key. It is totally impossible to remove risk and to imply that taking adults out of the environment will somehow do this is irresponsible.

 Finally, it is worth remembering that learning environments are becoming more fluid. The 14-19 diplomas will mean that some children and young people will be receiving their education in FE colleges and even with employers. These are environments that contain adults as employees and learners, who can’t all be vetted and it is utterly impractical to try and keep the adults and children separate, although I can imagine attempts will be made in some places.

The solutions to safeguarding children need to be more imaginative and avoid the deficit model. This can only benefit children by making them more resilient and develop environments that are vigilant and not suspicious.