I was shown an article on Monday from the Daily Mail of Saturday. The story in question was of a family taken to court for neglecting their son when they went away on business. The whole matter was rather confused but the case was thrown out by the judge. The reason for sharing the article was the author of the piece referred to the school’s Safeguarding Officer as the “safeguarding” officer. The inverted commas indicate that the author is questioning the Safeguarding Officer’s role.

This is so often the case when you work in the public sector. It makes truth of the Yiddish Proverb below. Everyone thinks they can run school/hospital/council/church/country/football teams but in most cases the more vocal critics of an establishment are those that are not associated with it.

I’ve read a thousand times what schools should do. There is always someone with an opinion that the curriculum should contain this module, or that book should be studied, a specific topic needs to be covered and in some cases, the promoting of a matter is simply common sense.

Religious Education departments in particular get hit from all sides. One side will say they are not required while the other will say they are not doing enough. This is not something I have heard from anyone who works in an RE department.

Hospitals get the same treatment. Pope Francis’ comment about priests being like planes “they make news only when they fall. Yet most fly” made me think of this. How often does a hospital get in the news for doing something good? It’s the same for the police, tales of police corruption are lapped up by the Great British public, opinions starting “the police should…..” are rife, but no one chooses not to ring them when they need to.

I am guessing we all have a story of when we have been unhappy as a parent with our child’s school. I am guessing we all have a story of being upset by a member of a hospital’s staff and I suspect someone at the local council has annoyed us all (not the same person, you understand). Life is like that, and journalists, or should that be ‘journalists’, are prone to seeking out the bad news stories, as good news doesn’t sell papers.