Education Bill

I am really sorry, but can I gently express my incredulity that we can say that teachers are in a different position from, say, care staff? Those care staff find themselves in a parental role with all the discipline and, often, the actual physical contact which that involves from all the aggro that you get when you are dealing with adolescents in the parental role—adolescents who have often failed to be contained in their own family. Are they in a less vulnerable position than teachers? I do not particularly want to extend this but I cannot see the logic at all of saying that this is a special position for teachers, because they are responsible for discipline in schools, when you have care staff in residential establishments— some of them very large residential schools—who in fact find themselves with even greater contact. I would like the Minister to look at that. I still do not understand how a teacher who may be in a residential institution and a care member of staff might both be accused of the same offence, yet one can be protected and the other cannot. I do not necessarily want the Minister to answer at this moment but I would really like him to take this away because it will make his legislation unworkable.