Hertfordshire school exclusions over sexual misconduct
- Schools in Hertfordshire excluded pupils for sexual misconduct on dozens of occasions in just one year, figures reveal.
- The charity Rape Crisis said the figures do not show the true scale of sexual abuse inside schools, following thousands of allegations by students across England.
- Department for Education figures show Hertfordshire schools excluded students 52 times for sexual misconduct in 2018/19 – one permanently and 51 temporarily.
- They were among 1,972 sexual misconduct exclusions – which include incidents of sexual abuse, sexual bullying and sexual harassment across England that year.
- Though a 13% drop on the year before, Rape Crisis said the number of exclusions will not show the true scale of sexist bullying and sexual violence being perpetrated in schools, particularly against girls.
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- To view and read INEQE Safeguarding Groups advice for this situation, select here
Nurse struck off over ‘grooming’ and ‘predatory’ messages online
- A nurse’s name was erased from the nursing register following a fitness to practice hearing held by the Nursing & Midwifery Council, which ended on March 18.
- The man failed to turn up to the hearing, which heard he had sent “a large number” of sexual messages to a person he believed was under 16 on an online dating site.
- In their findings, the panel noted: “Having considered the messages in detail, the panel was of the view that they were predatory in nature and indicative of grooming behaviour.
- The nurse has been placed on the Sex Offenders Register for 2 years.
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Teacher banned after modifying pupils work before sending to moderators
- A teacher who made “extensive and significant modifications” to pupils’ coursework before sending it to an exam board has been banned from teaching.
- Computing teacher John Wiseman altered work by students at Calderstones School, Liverpool in 2018, the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) found.
- The 47-year-old admitted making changes over concerns he had previously been “overly generous” in his marking.
- Banning him for two years, a TRA panel found he had acted “without integrity”.
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Children’s laureates campaign for £100m a year to fix primary school libraries
- All of the UK’s children’s laureates, including Cressida Cowell and Michael Rosen, are calling for the government to dedicate £100m a year to revitalise primary school libraries across the country
- This is happening amid fears that literacy levels have dropped severely during the pandemic.
- In a letter to the Prime Minister, Cowell, the current laureate, calls for £100m to be ringfenced for building new and restoring neglected libraries every year, saying that millions of children are “missing out on opportunities to discover the life-changing magic of reading”.
- Decades of research has linked childhood reading to future success, including a 2002 OECD study that found it was a better predictor than a family’s socio-economic status.
- At the same time, both public and school libraries have been subject to swingeing cuts over the last decade.
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