Parents Being Banned From School Sports Over Their ‘Bad Behaviour’ Shows What is Wrong With ‘Safeguarding’

Bleak news for the 9,000 primary school children served by the Merton School Sports Partnership which has decided to ban parents and spectators from their sports events. As usual ‘safeguarding’ is used as justification: “Over the years we have sadly observed an increase in safeguarding concerns when parents/carers come to support their children at our competitions.”

The letter to parents makes a number of rather shameful points about the behaviour of spectators including:

• taking photos of children and posting online without parental consent
• coaching children (when not the coach) and shouting instructions whilst they are performing
• abuse towards officials (often secondary school students) and other children taking part
• challenging organisers and officials around rules and decisions
• creating a stressful environment for the participants, with too much pressure around performance and winning at all costs
• encroaching the field of play such as cutting across finish lines (physically impeding runners) and running alongside children during their races

This one dismal letter encapsulates much that is currently wrong with British society: unruly – but not necessarily criminal behaviour, over-corrected by bureaucracy and safeguarding procedures. Admittedly the spectators do seem to have let themselves and their children down but need they all be completely barred? Surely not all parents and spectators of the 9,000 children are so ill-mannered? If behaviour by parents was so dangerous to children, why were the police not called?

In terms of the Aristotelian competing virtues, what is worse: a scuffle between parents at the finishing line, or the wholesale banning of parents from sports day? Is it more important that children do not feel pressurised to ‘win at all costs’ than to perform well under pressure? Should authorities, for their own sense of wellbeing, never be challenged about rules and decisions? Today, safeguarding, not freedom, resilience or tradition, wins out every time. J.S. Mill would not approve:

A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes – will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.

The pernicious nature of ‘safeguarding’ means it is difficult to argue against; what humane person wishes to downplay the importance of safeguarding children? Obviously, we don’t want pervy spectators photographing children at sports day (even though it’s not illegal if they are unidentifiable), nor do we want parents physically impeding runners or shouting frothing abuse. But haven’t we already got laws for infractions that are criminal? If the parents and spectators at sports day are breaking the law why can’t the police be called and they be arrested for disorderly behaviour? If they are not actually breaking the law, what actual problems are being prevented by ‘safeguarding’?

Safeguarding, with its bedfellows ‘non-crime hate incidents’ and ‘anti-social behaviour,’ steps into that grey area where no laws have been broken but behaviour is slightly suspect. Once there were social conventions that limited this sort of rowdiness at sports day, and effective coppers to police illegal activity, but now bureaucracies have instead created a blizzard of non-statutory rules that must be followed, ‘for everyone’s safety’. The English Common Law tradition used to have it that, ‘that which is not expressly forbidden is permitted’. Not any more, if deemed to contravene safeguarding protocol, policies and procedures.

This latest use of ‘safeguarding’ to cancel a previously ordinary aspect of British life is not without consequence: it blurs the line between legal and illegal behaviour. Through my work, one of my former charges was arrested for assault, after spending about a year variously assaulting other people. Our council’s children’s services had to submit all our safeguarding involvement with the child. All incidents of violence and threats of violence were recorded dutifully and the police praised our safeguarding reporting and our referrals to the relevant authorities including the police. That the boy was not arrested earlier on in his career of assault was in part down to the fact that safeguarding procedures were being correctly followed. It’s the ultimate in the bureaucratic zeal for a paper-trail rather than effective action against criminal behaviour. GB News commentator Aaron Bastani identified this state failure in the case of Axel Rudakubana where he took a knife into school 10 times and yet nothing happened.

While the thinking behind ‘safeguarding’ is to prevent crimes from happening, what occurs in real life is that safeguarding procedures are used as bureaucratic cover to avoid police involvement for actual illegal behaviour while simultaneously stopping law-abiding people enjoying legal activities such as sports days. It’s the ultimate in anarcho-tyranny and we should not accept it.

Mary Gilleece is an education support worker and her name is a pseudonym.