Parents' Forum

There is something so profoundly upsetting and depressing about the implementation of Sarah’s law.

10 years ago Sarah Payne was abducted and murdered by a convicted sex offender. It was a crime of opportunity-Sarah was playing in a field, and her abductor happened to be driving by and seized the child. It is every parent’s worst nightmare but a) it happens rarely (not even twice in 10 years) and b) the abductor had no relationship to the child; so no amount of information would have prevented this event happening.

And yet we have Alan Johnson today saying that preventing paedophiles is the top of his agenda. Surely the top of a ministers agenda should be to govern a country wisely and well and not both pander and use the darkest nightmares of parents to grab a quick headline? A climate of mistrust and fear is stalking the land in the name of child safety; and an erosion of civil liberties on an unprecedented scale. Parents should not be able to ask or be given information on adults they don’t like the look of. As a parent keep your kid away from someone who gives you the creeps but do not let us be in the forefront of this mistrust in society.

Parents’ Forum discussion on bullying 15/10/2009

Last night the Institute of Ideas Parents’ forum discussed bullying. As usual the discussion covered many things, and as always was able to really understand some of the nuances that the issue throws up.

I am just going to look at a one of the interesting threads that came up-what is happening in the school playground. One of the points that was raised was that there seems to be an expectation for children to behave in a better way than we expect from adults. At one of the member’s child’s school the policy was to make the playground “pain-free”. How this translated itself into practice was that the children are now divided into friendship groups imposed by the teacher, and they have to play in these friendship groups at playtime.

A primary school teacher described how now children have no room to be on their own, or do their own thing. The dinner ladies now are trained to be playtime mentors; the Year 5 and Year 6 children are asked to be learning mentors of younger children in the playground and they are sorted into friendship groups. Children are being constantly watched, monitored and closely supervised in what used to be their free playground time.

There does appear to be a real fear of letting children have space to be themselves, of children being out of control if not constantly marshalled, and a belief that children can’t sort things out for themselves and adults shouldn’t let them.

However, as one of the group said, no matter how much adults intervene, children will find ways of circumventing this. If forced to play fairies in a “friendship group” the children will designate the child they don’t like as the wicked witch!

It’s been interesting watching the reaction to some classic ‘child protection gone mad’ stories over the past few weeks – specifically, the idea that parents should be vetted before taking kids to Scouts; the sacking of the dinner lady who told a kid’s parents about a bullying incident; and this latest thing about Ofsted telling two female friends (who were job-sharing) that they’d have to register as childminders. These are quite different stories but there seems to be an understanding that they all fit together – as this report from the ST shows. I think they are all part of the same trend, to regulate more closely individuals’ spontaneous behaviour and the informal arrangements they make – that’s why I object to them.  But is that why there is a more general reaction, or are people kicking against something else?