The impending review of the vetting and barring scheme needs to offer a more robust system where all criminal convictions are checked, according to John Dunn, director at educational staffing specialist, Randstad Education.

Last week, the government launched a “thorough” review of the vetting and barring scheme, originally devised following recommendations made by the Bichard Inquiry into the 2002 Soham murders.

In June, the Home Secretary said that the government intended to bring the scheme back to “common sense levels”, stopping the scheme, pending the outcome of a review.

The review will consider the fundamental principles and objectives behind the vetting and barring regime, including:

·     evaluating the scope of the scheme’s coverage

·     the most appropriate function, role and structures of any relevant safeguarding bodies and appropriate governance arrangements

• recommending what, if any, scheme is needed now; taking into account how to raise awareness and understanding of risk and responsibility for safeguarding in society more generally.

Dunn told Recruiter: “We have to await the outcome for the review. As we understand it, the government is looking at a process where teachers have to get on to a register in order to prove that they are acceptable to teach. If they come to us to work, we would check the register to see if their name was on the list. If it’s not on the list, then we would like that to mean they are not fit to teach.

“Before the review, we were left with an anomaly in that that a teacher could be deemed fit to teach, clearing all the checking processes related to child safety. However, it still left agencies with the task of checking other criminal convictions which might render them unfit to teach in schools. These convictions might not be related to child safety but may be such convictions as drugs offences, driving offences and the illegal holding of weapons. These are potential risks to children at risk in other ways and things that schools would certainly want to know about before we place them.

“I would like to see all convictions on the central register so the central register is the final arbiter of whether an individual is fit to teach or not, taking into account wider criminal convictions as well as those related to child safety.”