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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think it wrong to punish someone for their partner's criminal past

171 replies

ReallyTired · 20/01/2015 20:18

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/teachers-to-be-barred-for-living-with-criminals-9893209.html

Barring teachers and TAs from living with someone who has a criminal conviction is desperately unfair. If someone has no criminal record then they should not be punished by association. Such extreme rules will undermine rehabitiation of offenders as they will lead to a breakdown in relationships.

For example if a teacher has a teenage son who gets into a fight and a caution for assult then the teacher will have to either kick out her child or lose her job.

Young teachers who live in house shares are not in a position to know whether their housemates have a conviction.

OP posts:
Nicknacky · 20/01/2015 22:11

really are teachers partners/offspring etc allowed on school premises at the moment?

LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett · 20/01/2015 22:14

It is entirely possible a teacher could move into a house share and simply not know about previous convictions - particularly an NQT who is moving for their first job. A potential suspension isn't necessarily going to help them do the right thing if/when they find out.

And that doesn't show poor judgement - you don't CRB your flat mates!

Also what about DV - again it's entirely possible for a woman or man to be married to someone who has a caution for being violent to them. I would suggest they need support and help - not being sacked, which will only make them more vulnerable.

violetwellies · 20/01/2015 22:22

This would mean that the lovely foster carer who's Dp was a teacher would have to chose between his job and hers, probably making sure that the young person in question was yet again moved on.
Shite.

ReallyTired · 20/01/2015 22:25

Yes, teachers/ tas partners can come to the premises on occasions like school fetes or a school production or a concert. During school hours everyone has to sign in. My husband once picked me up from work when my car had broken down, there was even a staff social to which partners were invited to.

to be honest I am more concerned about the parents. Mark Bridger I wales was a father of a class mate. Maybe a headteacher needs to be given a list of all the children who are related to a sex offender in the school as well as the names of the sex offenders. However I am not sure how practical it is.

OP posts:
Nicknacky · 20/01/2015 22:32

No, I would be more concerned about the teachers/partners from the school point of view (and parents, to a certain extent). Parents are not required to disclose convictions but if teachers are as part of their employment contract, then that's what they have to do.

I'm not alarmed by teachers partners coming to school fetes etc as a rule, but not a chance if he was a sex offender! Although I got the impression from your post it could be more frequent than that, which it doesn't appear to be.

Summerbreezer · 20/01/2015 22:41

What utter nonsense so many problems with this:

  1. The essential premise is that there are thousands of sex offenders worming their way into teacher's lives to pounce on unsuspecting children. The teachers of course, must be fully aware of this and doubtless part of the conspiracy. If the teacher doesn't know (or shuts their eyes to it) they cannot declare it. How often does that happen, really? Almost never? Thought so.
  1. Sex Offenders are 99% of the time subject to the Sex Offender's Register. They are also often subject to a Sexual Offences Prevention Order which prevents them being near children unsupervised. We've got the sex offenders covered. And violent offenders? Usually not a risk to a gang of eight year olds.
  1. So the risk is minimal but the damage, unintended injustice and harm this will cause is unmeasurable. Sounds like a typical vote-grabbing Tory policy to me.

Sigh.

ReallyTired · 20/01/2015 22:50

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21942544

So CRB checks are being relaxed, but people are being barred from working with under eights if their partner has a conviction. Makes sense - not!

I think the level of injustice of punishing teachers by association is distortionate to the aim.

I wonder who came up with this idea. Was it the person who produced the dullest mumsnet web chat of all time? (Ie Nicky Morgan?)

OP posts:
Mumoftwoyoungkids · 20/01/2015 22:55

Gree with Rinoachicken

As soon as I read this I thought "Holly and Jessica".

From what I remember it is believed that they stopped to ask him how Maxine Carr (who was their TA) was.

Nicknacky · 20/01/2015 22:59

Mum Although to be fair if this is based purely on convictions and cautions then that wouldn't have applied to Maxine Carr (to the best of my knowledge he wasn't convicted)?

Although, as an employee his previous involvement with police would now be revealed but not as a partner of an employee.

betweenmarchandmay · 20/01/2015 22:59

Quite nick

It's a bit like the argument for Sarah's law, which tragically would not have saved Sarah.

Mumoftwoyoungkids · 20/01/2015 23:57

That's right - I'd forgotten - there was a string of allegations against him but no convictions?

Would they have stopped him getting the job as caretaker?

I guess you really can't prevent a teacher from living with someone who was once suspected (but not charged let alone convicted) of a crime.

My FIL is a very high level sports coach for adults. A few years ago he offered to go into the local school (where dh and his brothers had gone) and do some coaching. The school jumped at the chance but he had to have a CRB check before he could even though he would always be with the PE teacher and never alone with a child or even a group of children. I think that the theory was that by being connected with teachers the kids were being given the message that he was a "safe" adult. I guess the same applies for partners etc of teachers. Very complicated though.

StarsOfTrackAndField · 21/01/2015 00:26

to be honest I am more concerned about the parents. Mark Bridger I wales was a father of a class mate.

Exactly. Over 9m people in England and Wales have a criminal conviction. The odds are that at a school fete there will be a number of people there with a record and some of them for violence. Do the advocates of this policy suggest CRB checking every parent too before they set foot on school premises and barring those who got into a drunken punch up as a teenager from attending the fete?

Worksallhours · 21/01/2015 01:18

I find some of the comments here to be a little naive. My DH is a civil servant and some of the background checks they do for certain roles and departments are extremely rigorous (for junior admin roles in certain areas, you can expect them to request personal interviews with the spouse, parents, siblings, and in laws before they make a formal employment offer)...and those roles do not necessarily involve the vulnerable.

limegoldfinewine · 21/01/2015 02:16

So I've lurked for a long time and it seems like deep down, people on mumsnet think that safeguarding measures for children are equivalent to some sort of daily mail, anti-immigration hysteria and that we should all just use "common sense" rather than any laws or rules. Most posters would talk about the good old days when young kids could wander around the streets without anyone saying anything. Of course, now all of the historic child abuse is surfacing, most people have stopped saying that. And so now everyone talked about how those were the old days and because of dna and education, of course there is very little child abuse today. It's just news hysteria! Daily Mail! Of course, the whole rotheram and other current abuse scandals surfaced, so that stopped for a while.

I guess we are now back to disbelieving the reality about child abuse in this country and denigrating attempts to reduce it. The weird thing is that people seem to want it both ways. If there was a rule that no teacher's partner could set foot on school property, then that would be "hysteria" and "over the top". But making sure the partner is not a threat, that's "nanny state".

partialderivative · 21/01/2015 05:59

Does a teacher who has suffered DV shown poor judgement?

Would we blame the victim?

georgeousgeorge · 21/01/2015 06:04

was trying to find a thread which referred to this story www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2918079/Wife-standing-teacher-husband-took-16-year-old-pupil-s-virginity-school-store-cupboard-suspended-job-acting-headteacher-complaints-parents.html

this definitely is the correct thing to do, a headteacher of young children is condoning breaking of child safguarding (albeit with older children)....

BMO · 21/01/2015 07:40

NickyNacky - really, I don't see the risk. Could you explain? My partner has no more "access to children" than anyone else in the community, and certainly less access than a parent, relative, neighbour or friend of any of the children at school.

MisForMumNotMaid · 21/01/2015 07:45

Partial I don't understand your comment. Surely if a teacher has suffered from DV and got a conviction they are no longer with their partner so their career is not effected?

youarekiddingme · 21/01/2015 07:50

Will admit to not RTFT yet.

However as someone who has a role in education action I can say we haven had new forms to sign.

It was not criminal convictions but rather licing with people who have previous convictions for offences against children etc.

ilovesooty · 21/01/2015 07:56

I work in the criminal justice system and have access to sensitive police information. I wouldn't be granted this if I knowingly lived with someone with any convictions.
Having said that I think this new procedure as it stands for teachers is utterly ridiculous.

Nicknacky · 21/01/2015 07:59

BMO I'm not necessarily saying a child is more at risk from your partner than any other member of the public but I think it could allow for a situation where is a partner very quickly could gain the trust of a child just by knowing a "safe" person i.e a teacher. Obviously abuse isn't going to be eliminated by this ruling, but is the alternative "why bother"?

Obviously the parent of a fellow student could also be viewed the same but that is outwith the schools control whereas the associations of a member of staff aren't.

To be clear, I don't agree with the suspension or disqualification of a member of staff overall but I think any potential known risk should be disclosed and assessed.

betweenmarchandmay · 21/01/2015 08:02

Lime, I'm certainly not someone who minimises the danger from predatory adults. I "see a paedophile around every corner" because there is a paedophile around every corner - statistically anyway, and they are just the ones with convictions.

It's in part because of that I think this is utterly ridiculous, because like other grand gestures with grand names (Every Child Matters; STOP and so on) it is on the surface in existence to protect children and as such there's a certain amount of disquiet when questioning it - as though to do so implies your desire is to do the opposite.

Ultimately this law, or motion, or whatever it is, is completely meaningless and as such pointless. A teacher may or may not have poor judgement but the only poor judgement that matters is poor judgement in a classroom. If this is an issue it needs to be dealt with appropriately but the one simply doesn't marry with the other. Numerous teachers have mental health problems which, it could be argued, may impede their judgement but to do so would break the law as well as be pointless. There are very few cases, if any, in a classroom, where poor judgement of the sort that would lead a child to a violent or sexual offender would come to light.

Furthermore, and most dangerously, this sort of attempt at safeguarding does anything but. By giving people a false impression that they are safe: that even individuals who are two, three, four steps removed from them are effectively banished, then a certain amount of complacency steps in. How many times have people who have expressed a worry about naked pictures of a toddler on social media on here been sneered and jeered at on here, for example? Even now I don't think people realise just how far-ranging sex offenders are. I knew a man fairly well some ten years ago - a social worker who changed careers to be a primary school teacher and then a headteacher. The school was outstanding, including safeguarding - OFSTED couldn't praise it highly enough - and then he committed suicide Christmas 2013 after indecent images of children were found on his laptop.

Yet every time a headteacher or teacher or social worker or policeman is charged you can hear the sharp intakes of breath and the gasps and shock. You will not ever stop a child potentially being exposed to a sex offender. Which is why, like traffic, we teach our children what to do and how to behave.

I honestly don't know how many times it can be said that denying any sex offender or violent criminal (smirking at DH now!) access to a child still won't keep them safe because those are the ones who are caught.

Nicknacky · 21/01/2015 08:03

ilovesooty same here, I had to disclose who my partner was and any family/friends that I knew to have criminal convictions. I think I may also have had to state who my good friends were, but it was a while ago so I might be wrong about that one!

I know someone who had to move house to a better area before he was allowed to continue with his application to join the police.

CundtBake · 21/01/2015 08:10

Shit.

I'm training to be a teacher. DP (who I do not yet live with) has been in prison for a violent offence. He was convicted when he was 17.

I'd be a great teacher.

Sad
EdSheeran · 21/01/2015 08:16

Do teachers have a code of conduct? I'm a social worker and we do. We agree not to bring the profession into disrepute, in or outside of work. However, this is very ambiguous. As a student, when we were regulated by a different body, we had a discussion about being drunk and behaving poorly in public and debated over whether this brought the professional into disrepute. I think we are heading into murky waters. If teachers are being screened, social workers should be and as of yet, we are not. We are in contact with the most vulnerable people in society.

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