Nanny State Scuppers School Exchanges

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One of the best things I ever did when I used to be a full time language teacher was take my students on school exchanges. In fact, we did better than that: the whole of their syllabus was built around the idea of having contact with an exchange partner. It made the subject real. It gave them a purpose for learning the language. Naturally it also gave them meaningful practice in that language. Perhaps best of all, it gave the opportunity to the youngsters in my charge to make friends for life and get to understand and love the people from another culture.  

Now this may all be a thing of the past.

Because our nanny state is insisting that families who have young students staying with them need an enhanced CRB check and even an ISA check.  The pair together cost about £120 and strictly speaking you need both for every separate occasion. I know this only too well: if we go by the letter of the law, every visit I make as a writer in schools costs the school – or me more often – £120.00 before we even start. And what do these two documents prove? Only that until the date in question you have not committed any crime harmful to children – or at least you have not been found out.

The powers that be are now demanding that the adults in every family that is to receive an exchange student be subject to these checks. It’s unlikely to happen. Many people will not welcome this scrutiny,  let alone be willing to pay for it and then there is the whole question about whether the checks could be done in time.

Take the children to stay in youth hostels instead, say the authorities.

Really? That’s safer? Wasn’t a school girl murdered in her bed on such a visit? And the rest. How can a teacher in charge of 15+ children give as much attention to an ill or homesick child as a caring family can?

To say nothing of the diluted experience of a foreign culture one enjoys when in an enclave group of one’s own countrymen.   

There is actually little danger of sexual abuse to most youngsters. That’s why it tends to hit the headlines when it does happen. There is a much greater danger that we may soon become so isolated from one another, so paranoid and so distrustful that wars will happen where there could have been peace and friendship.