Ruth Kelly, Ministers and officials who allowed sex offenders to work in schools made grave mistakes. The new reforms may go someway to rectifying the situation, but there are several major issues which impact on the commercial sector that have not be resolved. These include:

• Mandating that all supply teacher agencies be part of the DfES Quality Mark scheme that is administered by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation www.rec.uk.com. The cost of the initial and any subsequent accreditation should be shared between the applicant and the DfES

• Reformation of the Criminal Records Bureau system. This must become a dynamic ongoing process for the childcare and education sectors with mandatory annual checks and a system in place to identify teachers who have been charged with relevant crimes in the period between these annual checks

• A system to check the backgrounds of foreign teachers before being allowed to work in the UK. This should be part of the visa application system and be administered at a consular level with relevant police forces in the country where the application is made

• All DfES staff, including contractors to be CRB checked

• A decision to be made about how to regulate external staff who visit school on a regular basis, but who have no or minimal contact with students. There are many thousands of people in this last category (e.g. external maintenance staff and sales representatives). In most cases they do not require any type of CRB disclosure. If made a statutory requirement, having a CRB check could be viewed like the need for appropriate professional certification and insurance. If not, all non-certified people visiting school should have to wear some sort of standardised identification device.

The bottom line is that if you have staff who go into schools you should get them CRB checked even if it is not currently required. This may require changes to HR practices and it will come at a cost, but this will be insignificant compared to your liability should something go wrong. If it does and you haven’t then it’s unlikely your insurance no matter what type will provide any form of protection.

• www.rec.uk.com