THE UK’S children’s laureate, Anthony Browne, has attempted to calm a storm among children’s authors over a new scheme requiring them to be vetted before visiting schools.
Some of the country’s most prominent children’s writers have said they will stop making school visits in protest at the scheme, which fantasy writer Philip Pullman described as “outrageous, demeaning and insulting”.
But Browne said authors should not expect special treatment.
“I feel that as writers we shouldn’t necessarily be granted an exemption,” he said. “If all people who work with children have to be vetted by the police, then we shouldn’t be an exception. It seems a bit odd that we have to pay for it, though.”
Writers including three former children’s laureates – Michael Morpurgo, Quentin Blake and Anne Fine – have all threatened to boycott school visits.
Pullman, author of the His Dark Materialstrilogy, told the BBC: "It's the principle, it's the assumption that anyone who comes into contact with children for any reason whatsoever is up to no good and likely to be a rapist or a murderer and has to be checked out in advance to show that they're not.
“I object to it firstly on personal grounds, because I’m not any of those things, and secondly as a matter of principle: it seems to me to encourage the view that the natural relationship of one human being to another is predatory; it encourages children, for example, to believe that no adult will ever approach them other than to prey on them or do them harm.”
The vetting and barring scheme is managed by the UK Independent Safeguarding Authority, which was set up in response to the murder of two schoolgirls in the east of England in 2002.
It will be launched in October, requiring the 11.3 million people in the education, care and health industries who work with children to register on a national database – for a £64 (€75) fee. – (Guardian service)