Portrait of the Week – 21 January 2006

Miss Ruth Kelly resisted pressure to resign as the Secretary of State for Education after it was learnt that a minister had approved the employment in a school of a man who had been put on the sex offenders register after being cautioned by police for gaining access to child pornography on the internet. Other examples emerged, and it became clear that the categorisation of offenders and the clearing of them for work in schools was complicated and uneven. One man, aged 59, who was allowed to teach at a boys’ school by Miss Kelly, had been convicted for the indecent assault of a 15-year-old girl in 1980; he said, ‘I am not a paedophile. I am not a risk to children.’ There was a general game of hunt the issue, since Miss Kelly is also engaged in pursuing the Prime Minister’s educational reform policies against the opposition of Labour backbenchers.