so they're cutting the vetting and barring scheme

[southeastastra]

dread to think how much money will be wasted and don't really understand what could be wrong with it.

Me neither. It smacks of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

For years, the major criticism has been that the CRB checks are only as good as the day they were run.
The vetting scheme would have been updated with any new convictions: it was what people wanted. It was recommended after the Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman murders.

And now they've put it on hold because a few authors thought their status meant they were above such things

It has only been halted, so the planned registration introduction for July (which may have included nannies) is being delayed until further notice.
Existing registrations stay in place.

However it does now make it questionable about what Ofsted will do regarding registered childminders and nannies as many of our CRB checks are rather old and were to be redone under ISA... So now will Ofsted redo them at our next annual renewal?

Dread to think what will happen now.

They've already merged POVA, POCA and List 99, and messed that up so CRBs are having to be carried out against the new lists AND List 99.

I supposed OFSTED will have to redo CRBs, which are fundamentally flawed anyway....so I hope it's not going to be scrapped completely and I'm not exactly thrilled with the delay but I do take the point that it was a bit over-ambitious to start with.

I don't think it was the authors at fault! The whole thing was well conceived but badly implemented, it required anyone in contact with children to register - not taking into account whether they were left alone with children, what capacity they'd be in etc - but left out major groups of people working with children (like nannies) and their timescales were totally out of whack. I see Pullman's point - authors in schools are not left alone with children, they're constantly supervised, they're giving talks and playing like many other visitors. I bet local MPs/the PM wouldn't have had to be on it for thir school visits.

IMO core professionals should have gone on first (the health, education, social care and law enforcement professions) and it then extended to other jobs where people have contact with children, then to volunteers etc.