Increase in school attendance risks undermining lockdown, warn heads
The demand for school places is at risk of undermining lockdown, the National Association of Headteachers has warned.
The NAHT says contradictory guidance from the government has increased the levels of attendance significantly which could undermine the efforts of lockdown in containing the spread of COVID-19.
A survey of its members revealed that almost three quarters (74%) [...]
DfE faces legal action over health risks posed to vulnerable children learning in school
Vulnerable children will be exposed to further Covid-related health risks due to the government’s failure to ensure all vulnerable children can learn at home, an organisation has warned.
The Good Law Project, a not-for-profit membership organisation that uses the law to protect the interests of the public, states that while poorer and BAME families are exposed [...]
Children’s services workforce need protecting as a matter of urgency
Social work leaders have urged the government to do all it can to ensure the children’s services workforce, including foster carers, are protected as a matter of priority.
The president of the Association of Director of Children’s Services, Jenny Coles, said the children’s services workforce including social workers, staff in children’s homes and education settings, have [...]
Schools should close for as short a period as possible, says Anne Longfield
Ministers must ‘strain every sinew’ to get schools open again quickly, the children’s commissioner for England has urged.
Now the government has announced schools will close, it is vital that this happens for as short a period as possible, Anne Longfield has stated. Schools should open again quickly and certainly before non-essential shops, theme parks, pubs [...]
Child abuse in schools an ‘open secret’
Child abuse within schools was an ‘open secret’, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has found.
Perpetrators of child sexual abuse frequently had reputations as abusers and their behaviour was often an ‘open secret’, the research based on the statistical analysis of accounts of victims and survivors who were sexually abused in the context of [...]
Healthcare practitioners used position to abuse children, inquiry finds
Healthcare practitioners abused their positions of trust and authority to sexually abuse children under the guise of medical procedures, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has found.
Research into child sexual abuse in healthcare contexts based on the accounts of 109 victims and survivors who came forward to the Truth Project found sexual abuse occurred [...]
