Should I be concerned - people having access to school grounds?

[Clare123]

I volunteer at my daughters primary school. Since doing that I have noticed a number of people have the security code, which gives them access to the school grounds, for example the postman and delivery men. I also noticed that the builders were walking around the school (although I am presuming they are council workers so have been CRB checked).

Also, I was not CRB checked, and niether were the other volunteers that I know of (although they are all parents or grandparents.)

Is this normal at most schools? I know there is a lot of media attention on this sort of thing with the fear being at the core of it, but I just want to know is the school doing what it should be doing? What do you think?

DD's primary school has just installed a 10ft hire security fence round the whole playground with a padlockable gate. They used to have a 2ft high wooden gate that anyone could open and I think were told that it wasn't good enough.

The door into school is a buzzer entry so someone has to let you in.

Well postmen, delivery men, builders etc need to access the school grounds in order to do their job. So I think you are being unreasonable in being concerned about this. A school is part of the community after all, it does not have to be a fortress. The important principle is that the children are kept safe, but this does not necessarily mean excluding all visitors from the premises.
However, I am surprised that volunteers have not been CRB checked as that is now standard practice for regular volunteers - I think you should enquire what the school policy is on this.

I volunteer. My CRB has not come through but it is on the way. School and I very careful that I am not alone in playground with children. At lunchtime if I see a delivery person etc. I ensure that they are escorted to the office and another adult takes over - they don't give the code to people who don't work at the school. The CRB bit for volunteers is probably the strangest.

I work for a heating firm (not council) and everyone who works on a school contract either has to have a CRB check or be supervised whilst on site.

If you volunteer on a regular basis you should have been CRB checked. I agree with LadyGlencora that you should ask the school about this.

Hey - I am with you on this, I don't think everyone wants to hurt children - quite the opposite! I was just a little suprised considering how nanny state everything has gone! What I was surprised with is the delivery man doesn't have to inform anyone he is here - just does the delivery to the kitchen.

Yes - volunteers work in pairs with the kids in another room - so there generally needs to be a another adult (but not necessarily a teacher).

If he is a regular deliveryman he has probably been checked and is so well known to the school it is uneccesarry to inform anyone.

I have the codes and keys to two local schools becasue I hire the premises - there are often still kids about when I am setting up and I have free access. The school know me and my staff and we have had to sign stuff to get this access.

This whole CRB industry is a very expensive exercise in paranoia.
Ian Huntley would have passed a CRB the day he killed the girls.
Millions of pounds has been spent over the past ten years and yet the rate of murder/serious assault on children by strangers is the same as it was when Mary Bell was locked up.
Safeguarding Children - From What?

The vast bulk of the cases that the Daily Mail froths over are done by the families.

Sorry but the £60 a time that schools spend on CRB checks on everybody over and over again (PE teacher has been done 5 times by 5 Hampshire schools, every three years) would be MUCH better spent on "front line services"

Rant over.

Talkinpeace - completely agree.

Postmen quite often deliver before school opens on a morning, and secretaries start at varying times on a morning (I quite often get to a school and the secretary's not in yet) so it's relatively common for them to have the code, or for the doors to not be locked requring the code pad before getting near kid arrival time.

I'm supply, sometimes I get to know the code, sometimes I don't. It can be a right royal pain in the rear in schools where I don't know the code and get left outdoor PE to teach with no means of getting back into the building and a class of children in tow (or one school where you need the code to get to the staffroom area of school where the loos are - so you're stood there knocking on a door cross legged and needing a pee!).

5 CRBs in 5 years! I can rack that up in a year given the wrong set of circumstances - I've got three needing renewing in August/September... oh and I have to pay for mine so that's like £100 down the drain!

our school doesn't have any fences.

and the front door is locked before school, (so you can't get in to speak to the teacher before class) but they open it five minutes after the bell goes. and then leave it unlocked all day.

they aren't concerned about paedo stuff here, it's all students going off the rails and shooting everyone, so our specific school incident policy is more about having classroom doors in a locked state (ie slammable to lock) in case a stude in another room goes on a rampage.

it is an elementary (primary) school btw.

Talkinpeace - CRB checks SHOULD have picked up Ian Huntley. The only reason they didn't was the incompetence of the police, primarily Humberside who threw away valuable information because they didn't understand the Data Protection Act. If the CRB checks had been conducted properly Huntley would never have been given the job of school caretaker.

I live in a town with a population approaching 25,000. There are 20+ convicted paedophiles living in the town plus others not yet convicted against whom the police have some evidence. CRB checks ensure that none of these people come into contact with my children at school or in voluntary youth organisations. Of course, the CRB cannot prevent unconvicted paedophiles who have not fallen under suspicion working with children but I do not see that as a good reason to abandon CRB checks. Why should we allow some paedophiles to work with children just because we can't stop all of them?

I worked in a national voluntary youth organisation for a long time. I know what proportion of our leaders got weeded out by CRB checks when they were introduced. I also know that there is a continuing trickle of new people applying to be leaders who are weeded out by CRB checks. I am therefore strongly in favour of them.

prh
What about the people who cut the grass at lots of schools - once per term at each
or the postie
or the milkman
or the fact that peripatetic teachers are CRB checked by every school they work at - nice money for CAPITA, lots of money out of the school budget.

And yes, some leaders may have got "weeded out" but there has been no change in the numbers of children assaulted or killed by strangers for over 40 years.
So it has made no difference at huge cost
and made every parent scared of every stranger.
Instead of challenging and standing up, we are scared of our own shadows and expect the state to expensively CRB check the problem away.
And those 20+ peadophiles.
Do they go to the supermarket, get the bus, go to the library, the doctor, the cinema, the mall, the park?
They are still there, you have just falsely reassured yourself for a few hours per day.

Sorry. Utterly unconvinced that anybody other than those who will be ALONE with children regularly needs checking and then regularly per person not per venue.

"If the CRB checks had been conducted properly Huntley would never have been given the job of school caretaker."

No, but it wouldn't have stopped him being Maxine Carr's boyfriend and that was how he came into contact with his victims.

I agree with Talkinpeace. The whole concept of 'safeguarding children' in the way it is currently being carried out is paranoia run rampant, and it doesn't change anything. All the staff at that nursery in Portsmouth had been CRB checked and passed. The premises were passed by OFSTED inspections. None of that stopped appalling abuse happening there which went undetected by other staff who were supposed to be looking out for one another. It just creates a false sense of security and horrible sense of divisiveness, hostility and suspicion for and around people who work with children.

Contrary to popular belief, there are very few people out there like Ian Huntley or Vanessa George. Although I suspect that Huntley could have had a reasonable CRB if he had conveniently omitted on his app his past names, by the way, would have been easily done.

OP: what school should do is regularly change the security code. At least once a year, and maybe termly. This neatly compromises security issues as well as allowing necessary adults temporary access to do their jobs efficiently. I might in your situation bring that up with the head. That said, DC school doesn't have security access codes and I don't think that they need them, either.

Pixie
Like this you mean.....
www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/8632511.Jail_for_man_who_had_sex_with_13_year_old_girl/

All the CRBs in the world would not have stopped him hanging around the estate he lives in

To deal with a few points:

• The CRB system is not perfect. It would be better if, rather than employers/organisations having to check each person every 3 years (as per the current system), the checks were effectively continuous. This was part of the last government's proposed changes (the Vetting and Barring Scheme) but they were deeply flawed in other aspects.

• It certainly isn't a panacea. Everyone involved is told repeatedly that they must not rely on CRB checks alone. They must have other checks in place both before and after the individual is taken on.

• CRB checks are obtained by the individual's employer. The school cannot get CRB checks on the postman, milkman, etc. as it doesn't employ them. Their employer can only get CRB checks if they undertake certain types of work. That doesn't include delivering stuff, even if they may occasionally deliver to schools.

• School staff, NHS employees and others have been subject to checks for a VERY long time. All the CRB has done is open checks up to other employers and voluntary organisations working with children.

• It is not the case that people have to get a separate CRB check for every organisation. There is a simple protocol to go through that allows an organisation to make use of a previous CRB check. Whether the organisation chooses to make use of the protocol is up to them. Since voluntary organisations don't pay for CRB checks they tend not to use this protocol.

• Comparisons with crime rates 40 years ago are not very helpful. Crime generally has gone up in that time and the law has changed, introducing new crimes. A comparison with 10 years ago would be more useful. I'm afraid I don't know what the figures are, however.

• CRB checks have certainly had some effect where they are used. Paedophiles are now targeting organisations they believe are unlikely to be using CRB checks, e.g. small churches.

• Of course CRB checks cannot stop abuse within the family. However, according to the NSPCC 4% of children experience sexual abuse from a relative whereas 11% experience abuse from someone known but unrelated to them and 5% are abused by complete strangers (FWIW I am one of the 5% abused by a complete stranger, which undoubtedly colours my view of this).

• I'm afraid I cannot understand the mindset that says that because we can't stop paedophiles approaching children in the streets we therefore shouldn't try to stop convicted/suspected paedophiles working with children.

prh
what happened to you is appalling and I understand that you will always be on edge about it - rightly.
BUT
I am not talking general crime. I am talking specific murder/assault on children by other than close family members. It is unchanged since WW II.
NSPCC
They have been taken to task for leading questions in their research. As have their detractors for that matter. I do believe that reporting has risen to cover a higher percentage of what was always going on.
CRB
You try working in a school without a new CRB. DS's school got hassled both by the LEA and OFSTED for relying on another school's check - only a year old and in the same county.

List 99 has indeed been around for ages - and a right load of bilge it is too as so many police forces are out of date / inaccurate putting info on the database.

I honestly do not believe there are paedos waiting at the corners like the bears in Christopher Robin.
I do believe that ALL adults should be more willing to stand up and be counted and challenge what does not feel right.
Vanessa George's colleagues could have stopped her even starting if they had had some backbone and not assumed "the system" would work.

Lets all start to speak up. Every day. Every time. And give our children the confidence to do the same.

What Talkinpeace said.

And fwiw I am very glad that my dcs attended the infants school that had close links with the local community and not the one that is built like a bunker and whose only communication with the outside world for many years was a massive Stranger Danger sign. I really believe that being brought up in a siege mentality can be harmful to children. There is no way I would let my dcs get anywhere near the headmistress who has tried to stop a local firm from using their carpark because it backed onto the school carpart, who tried to stop the council building much needed flats in the city centre because some of the windows would overlook the school playground and who thought it a good idea that the first view children should get of the school every morning was a Stranger Danger sign. Anyone with such an unhealthy attitude towards the outside world is, imo, totally unsuited to being in charge of children.

I see your point cory, but unfortunately schools who do not identify and mitigate the "risk" to children will be marked down on their inspections by Ofsted. Safeguarding is a limiting judgement, meaning that a school could be outstanding in every other respect, but could be rated as inadequate overall due to a failure in safeguarding, and some of the situations mentioned by other posters constitute a failure in Ofsted's eyes.

The whole mindset is overblown, and very difficult to manage. The OP should be checked (and by this i mean CRB check, and have references taken up, and provide a full employment / education history - to establish that there are no gaps where she may have been in jail!) if she is in school weekly, or for 4 times or more in a 30 day period. CRBs are not considered portable, and Ofsted requires that schools obtain their own CRBs 9or from the LEA for state schools). The process is long winded, and creates a culture of fear and suspicion which cannot be healthy in schools, which should be at the centre of their communities.

The vetting and barring scheme (which hasn't yet been implemented and is under review by the new Govt) would have been completely unwieldy - it is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut! Also an over reliance on paperwork checks could lead to complacency - as Talkinpeace says, schools need to have a culture of openness, where inappropriate behaviour is not tolerated, and where there are robust whistleblowing procedures in place so that staff fell confident in raising concerns about fellow employees without fear of recriminations.

Marlin,
You are right. DH was working at a school that had OFSTED in while he was there. They were going to get a "good" Ofsted rather than "Outstanding" because of a failure on "Safeguarding Children" because the fence at the back of the playing field was too low. Railtrack own the fence. It would have been a criminal offense for the school to interfere with it.
People are penalised for what they cannot control so they give up trying to take control.

We must all take control of our lives and stop expecting "the system" to do our common sense checking for us.

I was just going to say Talkinpeace that I've heard that Ofsted are marking schools down these days if their fences are too low or if the children can be seen in the playground, etc. I think it is so sad that we have created such a climate of fear for our children to be educated within. I have worked in schools where, when on playground duty, teachers had to approach anyone looking through the fence, ask them who they were, and to move on, etc. Anyone, even parents with young toddlers who are clearly interested in seeing what the 'big kids' are doing. Yes, if some random weirdo has a camera out taking furtive pictures of the kids then of course I would do something, but what's wrong with stopping to have a quick look intot the playground to try to spot your own child, etc? Back in the 70s, at my mum's old school, she taught the children to say 'good morning/aftenoon' to visitors when they entered the playground, hold the door open for them, offer to show them to the office, etc. These days children are taught not to approach visitors, which I actually find quite sad.
With regard to CRBs, I understand the need for them for people who work alone with children, but I find it sad that lots of schools are starting to insist that parents have them before they are allowed to help at trips etc. Legally they don't have to if it's only every now and again, but a lot of schools are starting to insist, to cover their backs. They can take months to come through. When I taught a nursery class the Head insisted that for any trips I wanted to do I had to have a ratio of 1 adult to every 2 children, which meant that I needed 13 CRB checked adults just for a walk around the local area. I thought it was ridiculous. I was at the head of the group, the TA was at the back, with the parents in between. What exactly were the parents going to do with the children when they could be seen by everyone?? That was the only trip I managed to organise all year, and completely stopped all spontaneous fun as everything had to be planned weeks in advance to make sure the 'right' adults were available. I feel thatit creates the atmosphere that, until you know they haven't done anything wrong, you have to assume they are a child molester, when the chances of that are very, very slim indeed! When my mum taught in the 70s she used to be able to say in the morning to parents 'we are hoping to take the children on a walk to the park this afternoon, can you come with us?' and get plenty of volunteers. None of the children were ever abused by any of them.