Once again the debate rages over the proposed certification of everybody who does anything in a school – apart from possibly the pupils – with the focus resting on the writing community. The world of children’s authors seems to be split, with Philip Pullman making the most high-profile protest, followed closely by Anne Fine. The other camp seems to boast the current Children’s Laureate and Gillian Cross.
To be quite frank, although Pullman’s reaction seems a little strong, it’s a matter of far deeper principle than the scheme’s apologists suggest. It is not ‘Orwellian’, nor is it terribly sinister, but the scheme is so impossibly wrong-headed that only in the modern media climate could it be credible. It’s not that the scheme to certify everybody who goes into a school is in itself morally wrong, it’s that it attempts to paper over the real issue. How, exactly, does a certificate prevent child abuse? Certificates do not intercede between children and those who would abuse them. Instead of placing an emphasis on intelligent, responsible supervision of the children in our schools, the certificate attempts to reassure us that everyone who has been ‘certified’ is ‘safe’.
It is very, very worrying just how many people have casually accepted this notion. The cases reported in the news have shown, time and time again, that it is only through involved, competent social care that we reduce the real risk to those most vulnerable in society. Instead of investing stupid amounts of money in a bureaucratic nicety which tells us that everything is safe, we should be investing it in support of the people who are actually responsible for children’s safety. I mean teachers, social workers, perhaps even the police. But that doesn’t make a Sun headline now, does it?
One more thing: by continually undermining the truly responsible people in society, such monolithic papering-over-the-cracks projects only serve to cheapen their roles. The ASBO and the stop-and-search power destroys the credibility of the policeman on his beat, just as the Vetting and Barring scheme implies that the people we employ as teachers can’t be trusted, or indeed held responsible. It solves nothing. It helps nobody. And it puts up another barrier between sections of our already divisive and ill-managed society. The fact that it keeps much-loved children’s authors out of our schools should be the least of our worries.
