News round up: Teachers ‘should not be charged’ for sex with pupils

Teachers who have consensual sex with pupils should not face prosecution, says union

Child protection experts last night condemned a teachers’ leader for saying that staff who have affairs with pupils over 16 should escape prosecution.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said teachers should not face jail for having sex with pupils who are over the age of consent.

Read more on this story in The Daily Mail

Disabled people failed by courts and police

Christine Lakinski lay dying on her doorstep when Anthony Anderson decided to urinate on her. Ms Lakinski, a severely disabled woman, had been walking back from her local shops, in Hartlepool, with a box of laminate flooring when she collapsed.

By the time someone called the paramedics Ms Lakinski could not be saved; she died on 27 July 2007.

Anderson, then 27, was charged with and convicted of outraging public decency. The judge called his actions “shocking” and sentenced him to three years in prison.

But campaigners believe his sentence would have been stiffer had Anderson’s crime been investigated under hate-crime legislation
Read more on this story in The Independent

Independent schools ‘failing special needs pupils’

Hundreds of mainstream independent schools are failing to cater for pupils with special needs, even though almost a fifth of children fall into this category, research suggests.

The Good Schools Guide found, in a study of 800 such schools, that only three fifths were prepared to cope with common conditions such as mild dyslexia. Fewer than 16 per cent were able to take children with mild forms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Its authors said that fee-charging schools were unwilling to risk upsetting the parents of other children by putting a pupil who needs extra attention in the same class.

Read more on this story in The Times

Brit kids in care as drug cops nab mum

Two British kids were in care in the Dominican Republic last night after their mum and her partner were accused of trying to smuggle cocaine.
The lads, aged seven and five, were with Kelly Carrigan and Daniel Patterson, 29, when they were arrested at Punta Cana airport as they returned home.

Read more on this story in The Sun

Immigrant numbers may soon be capped

The number of people moving to Britain could soon be capped, new immigration minister Phil Woolas revealed yesterday.

He warned that unless action was taken, the UK risked becoming Europe’s most crowded country.

Read more on this story in The Daily Mirror

Lord Adonis goes to transport in latest cabinet reshuffle

Lord Adonis, the passionate advocate of academy schools was yesterday surprisingly moved to transport in the reshuffle, a shift that brought Tory claims that Gordon Brown was going soft on radical reform of schools.

Shahid Malik, the international development minister, gets a higher profile brief in the justice department. His previous post goes to Ivan Lewis, the health minister. The social care brief goes to Phil Hope.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Child abuse victims allege insensitivity

A man whose teacher admitted abusing him over six years was told that his claim for government compensation should be kept at the lowest level because his experience was a “one-off incident” and “consensual”, the Guardian can reveal.

Steve Foster, now in his 40s, made a claim to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), the government body responsible for compensating innocent victims of violent crime
Read more on this story in The Guardian

Charities put ministers in the dock over energy poverty

Help the Aged and Friends of the Earth will launch a high court judicial review today to force the government to stand by promises made in 2000 to eradicate fuel poverty and help millions of households facing a winter of burgeoning gas and electricity bills.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Vouchers fail asylum seekers, says charity

Thousands of asylum seekers are being forced to live without cash under a voucher system that leaves many struggling to buy enough food and basic essentials, according to Britain’s largest refugee charity.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Parents ‘naive’ about drug use by children

Nearly all parents are convinced that their children have never taken drugs, according to a survey that suggests parents are woefully unaware of their offspring’s lives. NHS statistics state that roughly a quarter of children aged 11 to 15 admit to having taken drugs. But a survey published yesterday found that while 22% of parents think children in their neighbourhood take drugs, only 1% think their own children have done so.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

 

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