They ask parents to help, then treat us like criminals

Vetting every volunteer will make reading lessons, after-school clubs and trips impossible until the backlog is cleared, writes Sonia Purnell

The school my son goes to is mad keen to attract parent helpers. In his first week back we received two letters asking us to lend a hand with reading practice and after-school clubs. But now it seems there is one very big problem with that – no parent, however upstanding, is to be allowed anywhere near a classroom until they have been vetted by the troubled Criminal Records Bureau.

So many teachers and classroom assistants remain unchecked that some schools stayed locked when the new term should have started. But now local education authorities across the country have decided any parent who wants to help at school or on a trip has to be checked too.

The trouble is that chaos at the CRB has caused such a backlog that few of us stand a chance of getting clearance until after Christmas. Until then there can be no one-to-one reading practice, no after-hours games, plays or language lessons, and no days out.

All this makes me angry when I think back to the birth of my youngest son, 19 months ago. Born six-and-a-half weeks early, he weighed in at just four pounds, too little to suckle; it was a round-the-clock feeding job just trying to keep him up to his birth weight. It is hard to imagine a more vulnerable, frail or helpless human being. But two days after he was born, at the end of a gruelling 40-hour labour, our maternity hospital wanted Joey and me to leave. The ward sister said my bed was needed by someone else, and she knew I would be able to cope at home with "help in the community". Once there, however, the midwives, doctors and health visitors brushed off my requests for help. The system left me to get on with it.

Now it seems that the same mother judged capable of 24-hour devotion to a fragile premature baby is considered by the state to be a potential danger to a class of 30 lively five-year-olds. Like many other mums, I would happily volunteer to help with reading practice in my elder son's reception class. But to sit in with Laurie and his classmates in the company of at least one qualified, vetted adult I will have to undergo the same time-consuming process as a full-time member of the teaching staff.

Many parents, baulking at being treated like a suspected criminal – for that is what the process amounts to – when all they want to do is help out, may well decide to stay at home instead.

The Department for Education says anyone who comes into regular contact with pupils needs clearance, but it is up to schools to decide whether that applies to parents. Many local education authorities are not taking any chances, however.

The Criminal Records Bureau started work only in April but soon ran up a backlog of thousands of unprocessed applications, causing the Government to send in a crisis management team. Faced with schools remaining shut, the Secretary of State for Education, Estelle Morris, said teachers could start work without clearance as long as they had been checked against List 99, which includes people with convictions that make them unsuitable to work with children.

Some education authorities have settled for checking parents against this list. In the febrile aftermath of the Soham murders, it sounds like good sense. But there are difficulties. Any parent whose name appears on List 99 is presumably not allowed to remain in custody of their children, and is therefore not involved in their education. In addition, the database includes only convictions, rather than any well-founded suspicions by head- teachers or the police. The leering, leching physics master at my own school did not have a criminal conviction but he still made any female under 50 feel threatened.

Some councils, including my own, thoroughly Blairite London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, intend to go still further in their vetting frenzy. Any volunteers will be issued with a form to complete with their personal details and send off to the CRB, presumably to join the mountain of other applications.

A greengrocer convicted of pricing her sprouts in pounds rather than kilos could, in theory, be barred under the system. Whether such minor embarrassments really should disqualify parents from helping their community is one thing. Another, of course, is the interminable delays.

Surrey County Council is putting its school volunteers through both sets of checks, and has 189 awaiting clearance, without which they will not be allowed entry to schools. Yet a spokes-woman admits: "Parent volunteers would always be under supervision, anyway. They would never be left on their own with children."

The CRB has so far failed to detect a single paedophile in its investigations into thousands of teachers and volunteers. Run by government favourite Capita, a recipient of £1.1bn of new state business in the first seven months of this year, it has also made some spectacular mistakes.

A wing commander wanting to help out with meals on wheels was vetted by the CRB and turned down on the grounds that he was a serial burglar. When he appealed,the well-meaning war veteran discovered his identity had been "stolen" by a fraudster.

The checks are "a sign of the times", says David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. "This is the price we pay for the need to be ultra-cautious."

The number of children in Britain abducted and murdered by people unknown to them has remained steady at around half a dozen or so for decades. These are among the most abhorrent of crimes, generating huge media coverage. But the Government's reaction to recent tragic events will stop millions of decent, parents from lending a helping hand to our chronically stretched education service for months, and possibly deter them for ever.

They may feel, as I do, that parents have a tough enough job as it is, with minimal support from government. Demanding to know whether we have "got form" before we're allowed in the classroom adds insult to injury.