Had the seven-year-old girl not told her mother about being tied to a chair and humiliated by a classroom assistant, Rachael Regan, more crimes might well have been committed (Teaching assistant bully taped girl pupil to chair, 9 January).
Parliament passed legislation in 2009 requiring schools to notify parents of significant incidents involving the use of force. However, soon after coming to power, the coalition government dismissed this duty as red tape. Following pressure from children’s charities, the parliamentary human rights select committee and teachers’ unions, ministers conceded that the duty served the best interests of children.
Michael Gove then asked his behavioural expert, Charlie Taylor to undertake a review. This took about five weeks and Taylor’s three-page report concluded that the duty was a “bureaucratic burden”, and it has been on the scrapheap ever since. No matter, apparently, that the safeguard was the result of the equally shocking case of a six-year-old with special educational needs who was repeatedly physically restrained at school, the full extent of which came to light only after her mother put in a freedom of information request.
Carolyne Willow
Nottingham
