UK: MEET YOUR FRIENDLY SEX-OFFENDING TEACHER

AT LEAST ten convicted sex offenders have been cleared by ministers to work with children over the past three years, The Times has learnt. Officials are now trawling through another five years of records to discover how many more teachers and school staff have been allowed to work with children despite being on the sex offenders register.

Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, admitted yesterday that "a small number" on the register were not on List 99, banning them from schools. But she refused to say how many cases there were or how long the situation had being going on. An intense search was under way last night to establish exactly how many teachers had avoided List 99, the government blacklist barring them from schools, since the sex offenders register was set up in 1997. The Education Secretary said that she took "full responsibility for all the decisions taken in the department on whether individuals should be placed on List 99". But she implied that other ministers had been at fault by announcing that she had taken charge "with immediate effect" of decisions on all List 99 cases involving people on the register.

Ms Kelly will come under intense pressure to disclose more information when she faces MPs at Education Questions in the Commons today. The Conservatives demanded last night that Ms Kelly "come clean" on the scale of the problem. Tony Blair sought to shore up his embattled Education Secretary by authorising a Downing Street spokesman to break with precedent and state that Ms Kelly would not lose her job in a reshuffle expected within days. Asked whether the Prime Minister retained full confidence in her, the spokesman said: "The answer is yes."

The controversy erupted after it emerged this week that Paul Reeve began a job as a PE teacher at the Hewett School in Norwich, Norfolk, last month. Mr Reeve was on the sex offenders register after accepting a police caution for accessing paedophile websites. He had disclosed his status as a sex offender to the school and presented a letter from the Safeguarding Children Unit of Department of Education, on behalf of the Secretary of State, dated 5 May 2005. It stated that Ms Kelly had ruled he should not be placed on List 99 and "was not unsuitable for working with children". The letter made specific reference to Mr Reeve being on sex offenders register and gave reasons for the decision, including: "In particular you deny intentionally accessing child pornography". The Secretary of State gave weight to "the advice from her senior medical officer who did not believe you presented a risk to children in your care". It added: "You did not fully appreciate the vulnerable position you put yourself in".

Mr Reeve was suspended by the school and later resigned after Norfolk police raised their concerns with the head. It had not been contacted by the DfES about Mr Reeve's case.

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Boston advanced classes see dip in "diversity" after racial favouritism dropped

The only surprise is that people are still surprised

Advanced classes like Maureen Costa's at Hennigan Elementary School, where students learn physics as early as fourth grade, have been the best ticket into Boston Latin and the city's other elite exam schools for years. But inside the accelerated classes at the Hennigan and other public schools in the city, the pipeline to exam schools is starting to look a lot less like Boston's public schools. Black and Hispanic students fill 44 percent of the 968 seats in the accelerated classes in the school district, though they make up more than three-quarters of Boston's students overall. White and Asian students now occupy 55 percent of the seats, though they are only 23 percent of the district. In particular, the number of black students, now at 239, in the classes has dropped by half since 1999, when the city stopped using racial quotas to assign students to the classes. [Surprise!]

The low enrollment of the school system's largest racial and ethnic groups in the classes renews debate about whether all children, particularly black students, are getting equal opportunities in the city's schools, an issue that has long rocked Boston. ''It's not a true picture of what the city is," said Costa, who presides over a majority white and Asian fourth-grade accelerated class in a school that is 85 percent black and Hispanic. ''You can't tell me that all black children aren't capable of achieving like white children. I wouldn't buy that."

Prior to 1999, black students filled about half of the seats in the advanced classes. Now, all students are admitted to the classes based only on their score on a national standardized test. School district leaders feared lawsuits if they kept racial quotas for the program; a 1998 federal court ruling banned racial quotas in exam school admissions. Since then, black and Hispanic enrollment at Boston Latin, the most competitive exam school, has declined. In an interview last week, Boston School Committee chairwoman Elizabeth Reilinger said she was unaware that the proportion of black students had dropped so dramatically in the advanced classes. She said she wants the school system to scrutinize the advanced-work program as a whole. ''The fact is, it merits review," she said. ''I certainly plan on asking for us to take a hard look at it in the spring."

The accelerated classes for students in grades 4 to 6, known as advanced work, began decades ago to prepare public school students to compete for spots at the exam schools with Boston residents who had gone to private schools. The city's public schools are now responsible for slightly more than half of the students entering Boston Latin, while the rest come from private or charter schools.

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Family Structure and Children's Educational Outcomes: "A comprehensive review of recent academic research shows that family structure - whether a child's parents are married, divorced, single, remarried, or cohabiting - is a significant influence on children's educational performance. Family structure affects preschool readiness. It affects educational achievement at the elementary, secondary, and college levels. Family structure influences these outcomes in part because family structure affects a range of child behaviors that can bear directly on educational success, such as school misbehavior, drug and alcohol consumption, sexual activity and teen pregnancy, and psychological distress. There is a solid research basis for the proposition that strengthening U.S. family structure - increasing the proportion of children growing up with their own, two married parents - would significantly improve the educational achievements of U.S. children".

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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